OKMEN 


THE  JAMES  K.   MOFFITT  FUND. 


LIBRARY  OF  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


GIFT  OF 

JAMES  KENNEDY  MOFFITT 

OF  THE  CLASS  OF  '86. 


Deceived 
Accession  No.  . 


3.     Class  No. 


Of  TM* 

TJNIVERSITY 


JH 
06 

o 
s 

w 

s 

5 

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M         rt 

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MMM 


American  Bookmen 

Sketches,   Chiefly  Biographical, 

of  Certain  Writers  of  the 

Nineteenth  Century 

By 

M.  A.  DeWolfe   Howe 


New  York 
Dodd,  Mead  and  Company 


Copyright,  1897-1898, 
BY  DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY. 

7<?  3 


JOHN  WILSON  AND  SON,  CAMBRIDGE,  U.S.A. 


TO 

E.  W.  H. 


PREFACE 

THE  more  clearly  a  book  speaks  for  itself,  the 
less  it  needs  a  preface.  It  is  the  writer's 
hope,  therefore,  that  his  readers  will  discover,  with 
out  recourse  to  these  few  words,  what  he  has  tried  to 
do.  They  are  intended  rather  to  give  to  those  who 
would  be  saved  the  trouble  of  reading,  fair  warning 
that  he  has  not  attempted  to  throw  entirely  new 
light  upon  themes  already  thrice  familiar,  or  to 
deliver  himself  in  terms  of  ultimate  criticism.  His 
purpose  has  been  to  bring  together  from  many 
sources  some  of  the  more  interesting  facts  in  the 
lives  of  the  men  with  whom  he  has  been  concerned, 
and  in  the  spirit  of  Montaigne,  interpreted  in  Florio's 
version  of  his  opening  words,  "  Loe  here  a  well- 
meaning  book,"  to  present  these  facts  primarily  as  a 
narrator,  incidentally  as  a  critic.  The  scant  mention 
of  such  men  as  Motley  and  Thoreau,  and  the  entire 
omission  from  biographical  record  of  names  like 


viii  PREFACE 

those  of  George  William  Curtis,  Bayard  Taylor  and 
a  score  of  others  will  suggest  the  obvious  fact  that 
no  effort  has  been  made  to  give  a  complete  account 
of  American  writers. 

It  is  hardly  to  be  hoped  that  all  errors  have  been 
avoided,  in  spite  of  the  pains  to  escape  them.  Es 
pecially  in  defining  the  portraits  has  it  been  difficult, 
in  some  cases,  to  arrive  at  absolute  certainty ;  and 
the  writer  will  be  grateful  for  any  information  which 
may  help  him  to  do  so. 


The  publishers  and  the  author  would  express 
their  common  sense  of  obligation  to  the  following 
persons  and  firms  for  the  use  of  portraits  and 
other  illustrations,  which  may  prove  of  greater  value 
than  the  written  word  in  giving  reality  to  scenes  and 
faces  :  Messrs.  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  James  Kirke 
Paulding,  Esq.,  Henry  C.  Sturges,  Esq.,  F.  H. 
Day,  Esq.,  Miss  Amelia  Poe,  John  Prentice  Poe, 
Esq.,  Mrs.  Annie  Nathan  Meyer,  W.  L.  Sawyer, 
Esq.,  Messrs.  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  Messrs.  Fords, 
Howard  &  Hulbert,  Messrs.  Little,  Brown  &  Co., 
W.  E.  Benjamin,  Esq.,  Horace  L.  Traubel,  Esql, 
and  Messrs.  Small,  Maynard  &  Co. 


PREFACE  ix 

To  Messrs.  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.  in  partic 
ular  must  acknowledgment  be  made  for  their  most 
generous  permission  to  reproduce  a  large  number 
of  portraits  which  have  originally  appeared  in  books 
published  by  them. 

BRISTOL,  RHODE  ISLAND, 
September,  1898. 


Contents 


Page 

WASHINGTON  IRVING i 

JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER •     .     «     .  29 

WILLIAM   CULLEN  BRYANT 52 

EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 76 

WILLIS,   HALLECK  AND  DRAKE .     .  99 

THE  HISTORIANS,   ESPECIALLY  PRESCOTT  AND  PARKMAN       .  125 

SOME  HUMOURISTS     .     .     .     ...    .»     ...     .     .  153 

EMERSON  AND  CONCORD       .      .     .     «...     .     .     .  176 

NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE 200 

WALT  WHITMAN        .      .      .      .....      .      .      .      .  222 

WHITTIER  AND  LOWELL       ...     .     .     .     .      .     .     .      .  242 

LONGFELLOW  AND  HOLMES      .  .     .     .     » 265 


INDEX 287 


List  of  Illustrations 

PAG* 

BRYANT,  WEBSTER,   AND  IRVING Frontispiece 

IRVING  AT  22     .............  4 

LAUNCELOT  LANGSTAFF,    ESQ.   ,.,.,....  6 

FAC-SIMILE    PAGE    OF    "SALMAGUNDI"    AS   IT    ORIGINALLY 

APPEARED .     .     ...  8 

MATILDA  HOFFMAN 10 

IRVING  AT  25 12 

IRVING  AT   26 •      •  *4 

FAC-SIMILE  AUTOGRAPH  PAGE  FROM  THE  MS.  OF  "  BRACE- 
BRIDGE  HALL"    ............  17 

IRVING  AT   52 *     ...  20 

SUNNYSIDE,   IRVING'S  HOUSE  ON  THE  HUDSON   ....  24 

IRVING  AT  67 *     •  26 

COOPER'S  MOTHER  IN  THE  HALL,  OTSEGO  .      .      .      .     .  32 

COOPER  AT  33    .     .     .     .     .   '  . •  3^ 

COOPER  AT  45 4° 

FAC-SIMILE,  SLIGHTLY  REDUCED,  OF  COOPER'S  HANDWRITING  43 

OTSEGO  HALL,  COOPERSTOWN,  N.  Y 46 

JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER 4^ 

BRYANT  AT  ABOUT  43 •  58 

REDUCED  FAC-SIMILE  OF  "THE  NEW  WORLD,"  APRIL  24, 

1841,    CONTAINING    PORTRAIT    AND    SKETCH    OF     BRYANT  6 1 

BRYANT  AT  ABOUT  50  .      .     »     « 64 

REDUCED  FAC-SIMILE  OF  AUTOGRAPH  LETTER  BY  BRYANT  69 


xiv         LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGI 

BRYANT  NEAR  THE  END  OF  HIS  LIFE 72 

A    EUROPEANISED    PoE 76 

EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 80 

VIRGINIA  CLEMM 84 

REDUCED  FAC-SIMILE  OF    THE  PROSPECTUS  OF   THE  "  PENN 

MAGAZINE  " 86 

REDUCED    FAC-SIMILE    AUTOGRAPH    LETTER    WRITTEN    BY 
POE  ON  A  BLANK  PAGE  OF  "THE  PENN    MAGAZINE" 

PROSPECTUS 87 

EDGAR  A.  POE 88 

POE'S  COTTAGE  AT  FORDHAM,  N.  Y 92 

MRS.  MARIA  CLEMM 92 

MRS.  SARAH  HELEN  WHITMAN 94 

POE  IN  THE  LAST  YEAR  OF  His  LIFE 96 

WILLIS  AT  31 ioo 

N.  P.  WILLIS 102 

FITZ-GREENE  HALLECK 106 

J.  RODMAN  DRAKE 108 

FAC-SIMILE  OF  PART  OF  A  LETTER  FROM  WILLIS  TO  POE  1 1 1 
FAC-SIMILE    STANZA  AND   SIGNATURE  FROM  DRAKE'S   POEM, 

"AflELARD    TO    ELOISE  " I  15 

HALLECK  AT  57 n6 

HALLECK  AT  7  5        .      .     .     .  1 1 8 

FAC-SIMILE  OF  AN  UNPUBLISHED  LETTER  OF  HALLECK' s      .  121 

GEORGE  BANCROFT 126 

J.  L.   MOTLEY 128 

WM.  H.  PRESCOTT        132 

PRESCOTT  AT  62 136 

PRESCOTT  IN  HIS  LIBRARY 140 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS  xv 

PACK 

PARKMAN  AT  20 144 

F.  PARKMAN 148 

REDUCED  FAC-SIMILE  PAGE  OF    MANUSCRIPT  OF  PARKMAN' s 
"LA  SALLE  AND  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  THE  GREAT  WEST," 

THE  ONLY  BOOK  ENTIRELY  IN  HIS  HANDWRITING   .      .  150 

MAJOR  JACK  DOWNING 157 

CHARLES  F.  BROWNE   "  ARTEMUS  WARD  "   .     ,  -    /    .      .  162 

B.  P.  SHILLABER      .     .     .     .     . 166 

"JosH  BILLINGS"    .     .     .     .     .     .-    - •'   .     *     .     .     .  168 

SAXE  AT  32 170 

FAC-SIMILE  OF  A  LETTER    FROM   JOHN  G.  SAXE    REPLYING 

TO  A  REQUEST  FOR  AN  AUTOGRAPH        .     .     .'   .     .  172 

JOHN  G.  SAXE 174 

THOREAU  AT  37 178 

A  CURIOUS  EARLY  PORTRAIT  OF  EMERSON 180 

R.   WALDO  EMERSON .     .-     .     .     .  182 

A.  BRONSON  ALCOTT 184 

AUTOGRAPH  LINES  FROM  EMERSON'S   "Two  RIVERS"       .  188 

S.   MARGARET  FULLER 190 

HENRY  D.   THOREAU 192 

RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON 196 

HAWTHORNE  AT  36 206 

HAWTHORNE  AT  46              .      .      ,      ,; 208 

HAWTHORNE'S   AUTOGRAPH 209 

THE  OLD  MANSE  AT  CONCORD 212 

HAWTHORNE  AT   56 216 

HAWTHORNE  AT   58 218 

FIELDS,   HAWTHORNE,   AND  TICKNOR 220 

LOUISA   (VAN  VELSOR)    WHITMAN      .     .     .      •     .      .      .  224 


xvi  LIST   OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

WHITMAN  AT  36 226 

COVERS  OF    WHITMAN'S    OWN    COPY  OF   THE    FIRST   EDI 
TION  OF  "LEAVES  OF  GRASS" 228-$- 

WHITMAN  IN  WAR-TIME 232 

FAC-SIMILE  FROM  THE  ORIGINAL  MANUSCRIPT     .      .      .      .  234 

WHITMAN  AT  65 .     .     .     .     .  236 

WHITMAN  AND  Two  LITTLE  FRIENDS 238 

TOMB  AT  HARLEIGH,  CAMDEN,  N.  J 240 

BIRTHPLACE  OF  WHITTIER  ..........  244 

WHITTIER  AT  29 246 

JOHN  G.  WHITTIER »;    «     .     .  250 

WHITTIER  AT  78 252 

LOWELL  AT  24 254 

ELMWOOD 256 

LOWELL  AT  31 258 

J.  R.  LOWELL 262 

LONGFELLOW  AS  A  YOUNG  MAN 266 

LONGFELLOW  AT  47 .      .      .  268 

HOLMES  AT  41 272 

LONGFELLOW  AT   55       . 274 

AUTOGRAPH     LINES    FROM     DR.    HOLMES'S    POEM    "THE 

LAST  LEAF" 274 

HENRY  W.  LONGFELLOW 276 

AUTOGRAPH    STANZA    FROM     LONGFELLOW'S    POEM,    "  THE 

LIGHT  OF  STARS"         278 

"THE  AUTOCRAT  OF  THE  BREAKFAST  TABLE"        .      .      .  280 

OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 284 


American  Bookmen 


WASHINGTON    IRVING 

A  BRITISH  matron  and  her  daughter  are  said 
to  have  been  seen  sixty  or  seventy  years  ago 
in  an  Italian  gallery  standing  before  a  bust  of 
Washington.  "  Mother,  who  was  Washington  ? " 
asked  the  girl.  "  Why,  my  dear,  don't  you 
know  ?  "  answered  the  horrified  parent ;  "  he  wrote 
the  Sketch-Book."  Whatever  confusion  was  in  her 
mind,  it  is  true  that  just  as  clearly  as  the  General 
was  the  Father  of  his  Country  in  affairs  of  State, 
his  biographer  held  this  place  in  our  republic  of 
letters.  Before  him  no  American,  with  the  excep 
tion  of  the  forgotten  novelist,  Charles  Brockden 
Brown,  had  made  literature  a  profession.  Writers 
there  had  been  by  the  score,  and  good  writers,  as 
names  like  those  of  Franklin  and  Hamilton  cry 
out ;  but  they  were  writers  after  they  were  some 
thing  else.  It  remained  for  Washington  Irving  to 
become  the  first  American  man  of  letters  known  as 
such  the  world  over. 


2  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

A  house  in  William  Street,  New  York,  was  the 
place  of  Irving's  birth,  on  April  3,  1783.  The  Brit 
ish  were  soon  to  evacuate  the  city,  and  Washington 
was  to  take  possession  of  it.  Mrs.  Irving,  a  warm 
hearted  woman  of  English  birth,  and  an  ardent 
patriot  of  the  new  land,  said,  cc  Washington's  work 
is  ended,  and  the  child  shall  be  named  after  him." 
The  child  was  still  in  the  care  of  a  Scotch  nurse 
when  one  day  she  saw  the  President,  as  Washington 
then  was,  enter  a  shop.  "  Please  your  Honour," 
said  she,  following  him  in,  "  here 's  a  bairn  was 
named  after  you."  The  President  laid  his  hand  on 
the  boy's  head,  and  gave  him  a  blessing,  which  he 
never  forgot. 

The  family  into  which  Irving  was  born  would  be 
called  large  to-day,  since  he  was  an  eighth  son,  and 
the  youngest  of  eleven  children,  all  but  three  of 
whom  grew  up.  The  father  was  Scotch,  of  excel 
lent  descent,  and  a  Presbyterian  of  the  sterner  type. 
It  did  not  take  Irving  long  to  unlearn  the  lesson 
of  his  youth,  that  everything  pleasant  was  wicked ; 
yet  he  never  replaced  it  with  the  converse  belief. 
"  O  Washington,  if  you  were  only  good ! "  his 
mother  exclaimed  to  him  one  day.  Lacking  sym 
pathy  with  his  father's  religious  views,  he  yet  had 
goodness  enough  to  betake  himself  independently 
to  Trinity  Church,  and  to  be  confirmed  in  the  faith 
of  his  mother's  earlier  days.  He  possessed,  too, 
enough  of  another  spirit,  to  slip  away,  whenever  he 


WASHINGTON    IRVING  3 

could  afford  it,  to  the  forbidden  play-house,  return 
ing  home  at  nine  for  family  prayers,  after  which  he 
would  go  promptly  to  his  room,  not  to  sleep,  but 
to  climb  out  of  a  window  and  be  back  at  the  theatre 
in  time  for  the  after-piece. 

The  person  who  objected  to  the  sight  of  brethren 
dwelling  together  in  unity,  because  it  was  much 
less  entertaining  than  that  of  brothers  who  quarrel, 
would  have  been  disappointed  in  the  Irving  family. 
As  Washington  Irving  approached  manhood,  after 
a  desultory  schooling  which  ended  when  he  was 
sixteen,  his  share  in  literary  undertakings  with  his 
older  brothers  was  an  early  evidence  of  the  devoted 
fraternal  intimacy  which  only  death  could  end.  One 
of  these  older  brothers,  Peter,  a  graduate  of  Colum 
bia  College  —  as  Irving  would  probably  have  been 
if  he  had  given  promise  of  any  fondness  for  method 
ical  study  —  established  a  newspaper,  the  Morning 
Chronicle,  and  to  this  the  author  contributed  his 
first  literary  productions,  a  series  of  letters  signed 
"Jonathan  Oldstyle."  They  were  sprightly  and 
clever  enough  —  mainly  in  their  criticism  of  plays 
and  players  —  to  set  people  talking,  and  to  win  for 
the  boy  of  nineteen  a  small  fame  even  outside  his 
native  city. 

How  came  he  by  the  power  to  make  himself  felt 
at  so  early  a  day  ?  Surely  not  through  his  masters 
at  school  so  much  as  by  his  own  way  of  cultivating 
a  strong  native  gift.  When  he  was  placed  in  a 


4  AMERICAN  BOOKMEN 

lawyer's  office  at  sixteen,  his  reading  was  far  less  in 
law  than  in  letters  —  for  he  drank  deep  of  the  Eng 
lish  classics,  even  in  "  office  hours  "  —  and  his  writ 
ing  was  more  for  the  expression  of  himself  than  for 
experiment  in  the  profession  he  never  followed. 
There  were  in  this  period,  moreover,  rambles  afield 
into  the  Sleepy  Hollow  region,  and  farther  up  the 
Hudson,  and  nearer  home.  The  quick  eye  and 
the  ready  mind  got  their  full  share  of  training  from 
these  many  days  sine  libro. 

It  may  have  been  his  delicate  health  that  made 
him  but  an  indifferent  student.  It  was  certainly  to 
this  and  to  his  brothers'  generous  care  of  him  that 
he  owed  his  first  trip  to  Europe,  in  1804,  for  the 
captain  of  the  ship  sailing  for  Bordeaux  ominously 
remarked,  as  Irving  stepped  over  the  rail,  "  There 's 
a  chap  who  will  go  overboard  before  we  get  across." 
On  the  contrary,  he  came  back  vastly  stronger  early 
in  1806,  and  with  an  horizon  widened  by  the  many 
opportunities  of  which  he  had  availed  himself  for 
seeing  stimulating  persons  and  things. 

The  New  York  to  which  Irving  returned,  "  the 
gamesome  city  of  the  Manhattoes,"  as  he  liked  to 
call  it,  had  grown  from  the  Dutch  town  of  20,000 
inhabitants,  in  which  he  was  born,  to  a  gay  little 
city  of  80,000  souls.  The  region  between  Wall 
Street  and  the  Battery  was  still  the  fashionable  part 
of  town,  and  into  the  life  of  this  little  world  the 
clever  and  handsome  youth  entered  with  all  spirit. 


IRVING   AT    22. 
From  an  engraving    of  the  crayon  sketch  made  by  Vanderlyn  in  Paris. 


r  or  THB 

UNIVERSITY 


. 


WASHINGTON    IRVING  5 

Of  law,  again,  he  read  enough  to  be  admitted  to  the 
bar,  but  society  for  a  time  was  the  most  engrossing 
interest  of  his  life.  One  has  but  to  look  at  Van- 
derlyn's  sketch  of  him  as  he  appeared  in  1805  to 
understand  why  a  young  man  who  added  wit,  good 
feeling,  and  gallantry  to  the  charm  of  such  a  person 
found  all  the  doors  that  he  had  time  to  enter  open 
to  him,  not  only  in  New  York,  but  at  Ballston  Spa, 
the  summer  resort  of  fashion  early  in  the  century, 
and  in  Philadelphia,  Washington,  and  Baltimore. 
One  is  not  sorry  to  find  a  trace  of  the  dandy  in 
young  Irving,  or  to  read  in  a  letter  to  his  brother 
Peter  in  England,  before  this  period  was  passed, 
"  Send  me  out  a  handsome  coat,  but  not  with  a 
waist  as  long  as  a  turnspit's/'  Then  besides  he 
would  have  "  a  waistcoat  or  two  of  fashionable  kind, 
and  anything  that  your  fancy  may  suggest."  There 
are  ample  reasons  for  believing  that  the  young 
women  of  his  day  believed  him  quite  as  fascinating 
a  blade  as  he  would  have  had  himself  appear. 

With  the  gayer  young  men  of  the  town,  too,  he 
played  a  spirited  part.  "  The  Nine  Worthies  "  and 
"  The  Lads  of  Kilkenny  "  were  the  names  under 
which  a  group  of  them  met  and  dined  and  frolicked. 
Most  of  these  Worthies  attained  distinction  of  one 
sort  and  another  in  their  later  years,  and  the  con 
science  of  the  day  suffered  no  great  shock  from 
their  convivial  doings.  A  story  is  gaily  told  of 
one  of  them  returning  alone  from  a  dinner,  and 


AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 


falling  through  a  grating  in  the  sidewalk.  He 
could  not  get  out,  and  feared  an  ill  night  of  it; 
but  one  by  one  the  rest  of  the  party  which  he  had 
left  fell  into  the  same  pit,  and  there  they  spent  the 
remainder  of  the  night  happily  together.  On 
another  occasion  a  policeman  thought  he  had  iden 
tified  one  of  the 
Worthies  by  the  hat 
he  wore,  and  taking 
him  to  his  lodgings 
was  persuaded  with 
difficulty  that  the 
body  was  that  of 
another  member  of 
the  company.  Their 
gaiety  was  not  con 
fined  to  the  town, 
but  at  a  country- 
place  on  the  Passaic, 
which  figures  in  Sal 
magundi  as  Cockloft 
Hall,  they'  spent 
many  merry  days  and 

nights.  It  would  be  utterly  unfair  to  leave  the  im 
pression  that  Irving  and  his  fellows  were  a  bad  lot. 
They  were  nothing  of  the  sort ;  in  an  age  when 
pleasures  of  a  certain  kind  were  followed  more  frankly 
than  in  our  generation,  they  were  merely  like  other 
high-spirited  young  fellows  of  their  world. 


Hatmcrtot.  JLonggtaff, 


Frontispiece  to  the  first  number  of 
"  Salmagundi." 


WASHINGTON    IRVING  7 

It  was  characteristic  of  nearly  all  the  work  of 
Irving's  pen  that  it  reflected  truthfully  some  phase 
of  his  life  ;  and  it  is  worth  remarking  that  his  first 
work  which  is  still  sometimes  read,  could  never 
have  been  but  for  the  somewhat  butterfly  existence 
of  these  early  days.  In  January,  1807,  appeared 
the  initial  number  of  Salmagundi,  a  periodical  con 
ducted  by  Irving,  his  older  brother  William,  and 
James  Kirke  Paulding,  who,  besides  attaining  honour 
as  a  writer  as  time  went  on,  became  Secretary  of  the 
Navy,  and  now  is  awarded  the  credit  of  having 
provided  the  world  with  the  rhyme  of  "  Peter  Piper 
picked  a  peck  of  pickled  peppers."  These  three 
young  editors  began  their  career  with  the  announce 
ment  :  "  Our  intention  is  simply  to  instruct  the 
young,  reform  the  old,  correct  the  town,  and  casti 
gate  the  age  ;  this  is  an  arduous  task,  and  therefore 
we  undertake  it  with  confidence."  Their  small 
sheet,  with  yellow  covers,  was  issued  by  an  eccentric 
publisher,  Longworth,  the  front  of  whose  house 
was  almost  entirely  hidden  by  a  huge  painting  of 
the  crowning  of  Shakespeare.  The  paper  appeared 
every  fortnight,  maintaining  to  the  end  a  humourous 
disregard  of  profit  and  the  public,  and  with  perfect 
nonchalance  ceased  to  be  after  twenty  numbers  had 
securely  established  its  success.  In  later  years  Irv 
ing  put  a  slight  value  upon  his  contributions  to  Sal 
magundi,  but  in  them,  as  in  the  work  of  the  other 
editors,  it  is  impossible  to  ignore  a  sprightly  clever- 


SALMAGUNDI; 

OR,  THE 

WHIM-WHAMS  AND  OPINIONS 

OF 

LAUNCELOT  LANGSTAFF,  ESQ. 

'AND  OTHERS. 

In  hoc  e*t  hoa*>  cum  quiz  el  jokesez, 
£t  smokem,  toasTtm,  roastcm  folksez, 

F«e.  Taw,  fum.  Psalma/iazar. 

With  baked,  and  broii'd.  andste*'d,and  toasted.. 
And  fried-  and  boil'd,  and  smok'd,  and  rolled, 
Vte  treat  «he  (own. 

NO.  vni.J  Saturday,  April  18,   I8Q7. 

BV  ANTHONY.  EVERGREEN,  GENT. 

,.«*  In  all  thy  humors,  whether  grave  or  mellow, 
.Thou'rt  such  a  touchy,  testy >  pleasant  feUovr ; 
Hast  so  much  wit,  and  mirth,  and  spleen  about  thee, 
There  is  no  living  with  thee— nor  without  thec." 

«NEVER,  in  the  memory  of.  the  oldest  inhabitant 
has  there  been  known  a  more  backward  spring." 
.This  is  the  universal  remark  among  the  almanac 
'quidnuncs,  and  weather  wiseacres  of  the  day;  and 
1  have  heard  it  at  least  fifty-five/ times  froqi  old 
mrs.  Cockloft,  who,  poor  Woman,  is  one  of  those  ' 
walking  almanacs  that  foretel  every  snow,  rain,  or 
frost  by  the  shooting  of  corns,  a  pain  in  the  bones% 
or  an  »•  ugly  stitch  in  the  side."  .  I  do  not  recollect, 
.in  the  whole  course. of  my  life,  to  have  seen  the 
Tn6hth  of  March  indulge  in  such  untoward  capers, 
caprices  and  coquetries  as  it  has  done  this  year  r 
I  might  have  forgiven -these  vagaries,  had  they 
not  completely  knocked  up  wy  friend  LangstaffV 


FAC-SIMILE  PAGE  OF  "SALMAGUNDI"  AS  IT  ORIGINALLY 
APPEARED. 


WASHINGTON    IRVING  9 

ness  and  a  reproduction  of  the  colour  and  foibles  of 
society,  so  convincingly  faithful  as  to  have  a  posi 
tive  historic  value.  It  was  eminently  a  New  York 
publication,  even  to  the  indulgence  of  the  now  time- 
honoured  flings  at  Philadelphia  and  its  people. 
The  chief  interest  in  Irving' s  work  for  it,  which  is 
easily  picked  out,  lies  in  the  detection  of  the  first 
notes  in  the  many  keys  to  which  his  more  practised 
voice  was  to  be  set. 

Directly  due  to  his  surroundings,  also,  was  Irv 
ing's  next  piece  of  work,  Diedrich  Knickerbocker  s 
History  of  New  Tork  (1809).  He  began  it  with  his 
brother  Peter  as  a  satire  on  a  serious  history  of  the 
town,  which  had  just  been  published ;  and  when  Peter 
was  called  abroad  Irving  had  his  own  will  in  making 
it  just  what  it  is  —  a  masterpiece  in  the  humour  of  the 
day  which  begot  it.  There  is  no  need  of  dwelling 
upon  its  qualities,  but  when  we  call  our  own  day  the 
day  of  clever  advertising,  it  is  well  to  remember  the 
heralding  of  the  Knickerbocker  History.  The  grave 
communications  to  the  Evening  Post,  beginning  six 
weeks  before  the  book  appeared,  about  an  old  Died 
rich  Knickerbocker  who  had  strayed  from  New  York 
without  paying  for  his  lodgings,  about  his  having 
been  seen  on  the  way  to  Albany,  and  the  landlord's 
final  decision  to  print  a  manuscript  which  the  old 
man  left  behind,  and  to  apply  the  proceeds  to  the 
unpaid  bill  —  all  these  would  be  worth  transcribing 
in  full  were  they  not  included  in  the  later  editions 


io  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

of  the  book.  Besides  almost  leading  a  city  official 
to  offer  a  reward  for  the  missing  Diedrich,  they 
served  an  excellent  purpose  in  stirring  up  curiosity, 
which  the  book  appeased  to  the  satisfaction  of  all 
but  the  representatives  of  the  families  which  ever 
since  have  gone  by  the  name  of  Knickerbocker. 
One  can  see  readily  now  why  their  ancestral  pride 
must  have  been  touched  at  first.  They  could  not 
possibly  have  foreseen  that  banks,  clubs,  buildings, 
manufactories,  and  enterprises  of  every  sort  would 
be  named  one  day  for  their  forefathers  because  of 
this  very  book,  and  that  the  young  author  who  had 
hurt  their  feelings  was  the  creator  of  the  whole 
Knickerbocker  background  before  which  modern 
New  York  is  very  glad  to  stand. 

While  he  was  at  work  upon  the  last  part  of  the 
Knickerbocker  History,  the  great  sorrow  of  Irving' s 
life  befell  him.  Miss  Matilda  Hoffman,  to  whom 
he  was  engaged  to  be  married,  died  after  a  brief  ill 
ness.  George  William  Curtis  once  described  Irv 
ing's  life  as  "  a  life  without  events,  or  only  the  events 
of  all  our  lives,  except  that  it  lacks  the  great  event 
of  marriage."  The  death  which  caused  this  lack, 
though  it  did  not  rob  him  of  the  courage  to  finish 
his  humourous  production,  drove  him  for  a  time 
from  all  society,  and  made  an  impression  upon  his 
spirit  which  his  whole  subsequent  life  of  activity 
never  quite  removed.  It  is  by  no  means  certain 
that  as  the  years  went  by  he  never  thought  again  of 


MATILDA   HOFFMAN, 


OF  TMB       

UNIVERSITY 


WASHINGTON    IRVING  n 

marriage  for  himself.  Indeed,  one  is  inclined  to 
believe  that  at  Dresden,  in  1823,  if  all  the  circum 
stances  had  been  propitious,  he  would  have  married 
an  English  girl  with  whom  and  whose  family  he  had 
formed  a  tender  intimacy.  But  when  he  died  an  old 
man,  a  lock  to  which  he  himself  had  always  kept 
the  key  was  found  to  guard  a  braid  of  hair  and  a 
beautiful  miniature,  with  a  slip  of  paper  marked  in 
his  own  handwriting,  "  Matilda  Hoffman."  No  less 
faithfully  had  he  kept  her  Bible  and  Prayer-Book 
throughout  his  life.  Of  the  miniature  his  publisher, 
George  P.  Putnam,  told  the  story  of  having  once 
had  it  retouched  and  remounted  for  its  possessor, 
forty  years  after  Miss  Hoffman's  death.  "  When 
I  returned  it  to  him  in  a  suitable  velvet  case,"  said 
Mr.  Putnam,  "  he  took  it  to  a  quiet  corner  and 
looked  intently  on  the  face  for  some  minutes,  appar 
ently  unobserved,  his  tears  falling  freely  on  the  glass 
as  he  gazed."  Who  shall  say  that  the  cherishing  of 
such  a  memory  as  this  did  not  find  its  direct  ex 
pression  in  the  gentle  chivalry  with  which  he  bore 
himself,  as  a  writer  and  as  a  man,  towards  all  women  ? 
Even  before  Miss  Hoffman's  death  Irving  had 
been  in  doubt  about  the  career  best  suited  to  his 
talents ;  and  the  dejection  into  which  he  fell  at  once 
did  not  help  his  decision.  The  law  held  his  interest 
but  slightly.  The  editing  of  a  magazine,  which  he 
undertook  in  Philadelphia,  was  distasteful  to  him, 
both  because  of  his  tender  heart  in  criticism  and 


IRVING  AT  25. 
From  an  original  sketch  by  Jarvis. 


WASHINGTON    IRVING  13 

because  of  the  necessity  for  systematic  work.  "  Ah," 
he  said  once,  in  later  life,  "  don't  talk  to  me  of  sys 
tem  ;  I  never  had  any.  ...  I  have,  it  is  true,  my 
little  budgets  of  notes — some  tied  oneway,  some 
another  —  and  which  when  I  need,  I  think  I  come 
upon  in  my  pigeon-holes  by  a  sort  of  instinct. 
That  is  all  there  is  of  it."  But  though  the  maga 
zine  did  not  please  him,  and  he  dropped  it  at  the 
beginning  of  1815,  it  kept  his  restless  feet  some 
what  in  the  path  of  letters. 

The  War  of  1812  had  stirred  Irving's  patriotism, 
and  was  responsible  for  his  bearing  for  a  time  the 
title  of  colonel,  as  an  aide  to  Governor  Tompkins 
of  New  York.  After  peace  was  declared  Irving, 
always  ready  for  an  expedition,  was  on  the  very 
point  of  sailing  with  Decatur  to  the  Algerian  coast ; 
but  changing  his  plan  almost  at  the  last  moment, 
yet  unwilling  to  give  up  the  journey  abroad,  he 
sailed  instead  for  Liverpool  to  join  his  brother  Peter 
in  the  conduct  of  the  English  branch  of  the  com 
mercial  house  on  which  their  fortunes  depended. 
It  was  seventeen  years  later,  in  1832,  that  he  set 
foot  again  on  American  soil. 

One  of  the  stock  objections  to  Irving,  urged  even 
by  English  critics,  is  that  his  books  are  more  Eng 
lish  than  American.  As  early  as  in  the  days  of 
Salmagundi  he  had  shown,  as  he  was  always  to  show, 
how  much  his  habit  of  mind  and  expression  owed 
to  Addison,  Steele,  and  other  models  of  our  com- 


i4  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

mon  tongue.  At  heart,  moreover,  Irving  was  a 
Tory,  a  Conservative.  His  very  nature  felt  a 
kinship  with  whatever  was  long  established  and 
mellowed  by  centuries  of  tradition.  The  facts  that 
he  spent  much  time  in  the  family  of  a  married  sister 
in  England,  and  through  his  talents  and  graces  soon 
found  himself  welcomed  to  the  inner  life  of  many 
other  English  houses,  must  have  contributed  much 
to  his  sympathy  with  the  scenes  of  "  our  old 
home."  But  there  is  no  need  of  framing  a  defence 
for  such  an  attitude.  "  What,  pray,  if  the  hero  of 
Bracebridge  Hall  be  own  cousin  to  Sir  Roger  de 
Coverley  ?  "  Ik  Marvel  once  asked.  "  Is  that  a 
relationship  to  be  discarded  ?  "  Surely  not,  and  no 
less  surely  did  our  country  and  England,  in  a  time 
when  the  press  of  both  lands  kept  the  mutual  feel 
ing  of  animosity  at  a  high  tension,  owe  to  Irving 
a  better  knowledge  of  each  other  and  a  truer 
recognition  of  the  good  to  be  found  on  both  sides 
of  the  water.  It  was  Thackeray  who  called  him 
"the  first  ambassador  whom  the  New  World  of 
Letters  sent  to  the  Old."  Irving's  own  explana 
tion  of  the  English  interest  in  him  was  merely  this : 
"  I  was  looked  upon  as  something  new  and  strange 
in  literature ;  a  kind  of  demi-savage,  with  a  feather 
in  his  hand  instead  of  on  his  head ;  and  there  was 
curiosity  to  hear  what  such  a  being  had  to  say  about 
civilised  society." 

This  curiosity  did  not  exist  at  once.     When  he 


IRVING  AT   26. 
From  an  engraving  of  the  portrait  by  Jarvis. 


WASHINGTON   IRVING  15 

came  to  England  he  was  comparatively  unknown. 
Scott,  to  be  sure,  had  read  what  he  called  "  the 
most  excellently  jocose  history  of  New  York,"  and 
had  thoroughly  enjoyed  it.  But  Irving  had  no 
general  fame,  and  for  several  years  had  no  oppor 
tunity  of  creating  it.  The  uncongenial  business 
which  had  brought  him  to  Liverpool  took  most  of 
his  time,  and  to  no  avail,  for  in  1 8 1 8  the  enterprise 
proved  itself  a  failure.  It  was  this  event  which 
made  it  a  necessity  for  Irving  to  look  upon  litera 
ture  as  a  means  of  support  more  than  of  recreation. 
He  ceased  to  be  merely  the  ornamental  member  of 
his  family,  and  as  time  went  on  took  upon  himself 
the  care  of  those  who  had  cared  for  him.  A  more 
winning  picture  of  brotherly  sympathy  and  a  gener 
osity  in  which  largeness  and  delicacy  were  combined 
could  hardly  be  found  than  that  which  the  corre 
spondence  between  Irving  and  his  brother  Peter, 
never  strong  after  the  Liverpool  failure,  revealed. 
Be  it  said  that  the  success  which  Irving  was  not  slow 
in  reaching  when  once  he  set  about  to  attain  it  ren 
dered  him  abundantly  able  to  do  for  others  besides 
himself. 

It  was  the  Sketch-Book,  of  which  the  first  parts 
appeared  in  America  in  1819,  when  Irving  was 
thirty-six,  that  told  all  English-speaking  readers  of 
a  new  writer  who  must  be  recognised.  The  book 
was  vastly  successful  at  home,  and  when  Irving 
found  its  portions  copied  in  English  prints,  he  saw 


16  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

the  necessity  of  publishing  it  in  England.  Murray, 
"the  prince  of  publishers,"  declined  at  first  to  take 
it,  employing  a  formula  of  considerate  rejection  which 
the  modern  publisher  has  not  learned  to  improve 
upon  —  "  only  because  I  do  not  see  that  scope  in 
the  nature  of  it  which  would  enable  me  to  make 
those  satisfactory  accounts  between  us,  without  which 
I  really  feel  no  satisfaction  in  engaging."  Accord 
ingly  Irving  decided  to  print  the  book  at  his  own 
risk  in  England ;  but  the  printer  failed  soon  after 
the  book  appeared,  whereupon  Murray  was  only  too 
glad  to  take  the  Sketch-Book  into  his  own  hands. 
From  this  time  on  he  was  Irving's  English  pub 
lisher,  and  so  liberal  were  his  dealings  throughout 
their  intercourse,  that  one  may  well  believe  with 
Murray's  biographer,  that  the  writer  had  far  more 
profit  from  his  books  than  the  publisher  —  no  com 
mon  circumstance  in  those  or  later  days. 

It  would  be  tedious  to  chronicle  with  precision 
the  completion  from  time  to  time  of  Irving's  other 
books.  When  the  sun  has  risen  above  the  early 
morning  sky  we  are  content  to  let  it  shine  on  without 
our  close  scrutiny.  One  could  not  follow  Irving's 
work,  however,  without  noticing  how  one  phase 
of  its  early  character  is  continued,  how  it  con 
stantly  reflects  the  circumstances  of  his  life.  As  a 
wanderer  about  England  and  the  Continent,  he 
turns  a  quick  eye  upon  social  life,  marks  the 
pathetic  and  humourous  scenes  about  him,  and  tells 


•//i***    c^it. 


V    *C+fCrtsi*s     &&£~ 


FAC-SIMILE  AUTOGRAPH   PAGE  FROM  THE  MS.   OF 
"  BRACEBRIDGE  HALL." 


i8  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

us  all  he  sees  in  books  like  Bracebridge  Hall  and 
Tales  of  a  Traveller.  He  goes  to  Spain  to  investi 
gate  some  special  documents  concerning  Columbus, 
and  the  result  is  not  only  a  body  of  historical  work 
beyond  his  own  expectations,  but  the  drawing  of 
many  small  pictures,  distinctively  Geoffrey  Crayon's, 
like  those  which  figure  in  The  Alhambra.  So  clearly 
do  the  writings  express  the  man  that  one  reads  his 
Life  and  Letters  only  to  become  better  acquainted 
with  the  genial,  sympathetic,  good  friend  one  has 
come  to  know  in  his  works.  Indeed,  he  might 
have  been  writing  truthfully  of  himself  when  he 
wrote  of  Goldsmith :  "  Few  have  so  eminently 
possessed  the  magic  gift  of  identifying  themselves 
with  their  writings." 

It  is  in  the  record  of  his  friendships  abroad  and 
at  home  that  one  comes,  perhaps,  most  nearly  to 
the  man  himself.  He  looked  upon  the  world  and 
people  with  a  smiling  front,  and  so,  for  the  most  part, 
they  looked  back  at  him.  "  Ah,  God  bless  your 
merry  face  ! "  said  an  Irish  beggarwoman  to  him 
one  day,  as  he  walked  along  the  street  enjoying  the 
memory  of  one  of  his  own  jokes,  "surely  you're 
not  the  man  will  refuse  a  poor  woman  a  sixpence?  " 
A  guinea  was  the  smallest  coin  he  had  in  his  pocket, 
and  he  gave  it  to  her.  Much  of  his  philosophy  of 
life  is  contained  in  the  passage  in  Irving' s  hand 
writing,  which  the  reader  can  easily  make  out  here 
for  himself.  Early  in  his  English  life  he  meets  with 


WASHINGTON    IRVING  19 

Scott,  who  promptly  thanks  "  Tom  "  Campbell  "  for 
making  me  known  to  Mr.  Washington  Irving,  who 
is  one  of  the  best  and  pleasantest  acquaintances  I 
have  made  this  many  a  day."  Of  Scott  in  return 
Irving  says :  "  He  is  a  man  that,  if  you  knew,  you 
would  love  ;  a  right  honest-hearted,  generous-spirited 
being."  Again  he  calls  him  "  a  sterling  golden- 
hearted  old  worthy,  full  of  the  joyousness  of  youth." 
He  meets  with  Moore,  and  cares  so  greatly  for  him  as 
even  to  admire  poetry  which  he  had  previously  con 
demned  —  not  an  unprecedented  change,  be  it  said, 
when  friendship  and  criticism  become  intermingled. 
Yet  he  was  not  quite  blind  to  the  weaknesses  of  his 
friends.  Holding  the  highest  regard  for  the  aged 
Samuel  Rogers,  he  could  make  the  shrewd  observa 
tion  in  a  letter :  "  I  dined  tete-a-tete  with  him  some 
time  since,  and  he  served  up  his  friends  as  he  served 
up  his  fish,  with  a  squeeze  of  lemon  over  each.  It 
was  very  piquant,  but  it  rather  set  my  teeth  on 
edge."  With  the  painters  Leslie  and  Gilbert  Stuart 
Newton  it  was  inevitable  that  Geoffrey  Crayon 
should  have  felt  a  close  kinship.  On  the  basis  of 
his  intimacy  with  each,  and  of  the  sort  of  figure 
painting  which  occupied  all  three,  it  were  no  un 
worthy  task  for  the  proper  person  to  tell  us  some 
thing  of  the  art  which  appealed  most  strongly  to  the 
taste  of  the  twenties  and  thirties,  and  to  speculate 
on  the  different  employment  which  the  brushes  and 
the  pen  of  three  such  friends  would  find  for  them 
selves  at  this  our  end  of  the  century. 


20  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

One  should  not  bring  Irving  back  from  his  Eng 
lish  friendships  without  repeating  the  classic  story 
of  the  origin  of  Rebecca  in  Ivanhoe.  If  report  be 
true,  it  was  to  Irving  that  Scott  owed  his  idea  of  this 
character.  Miss  Rebecca  Gratz,  of  Philadelphia, 
had  been  one  of  Miss  Hoffman's  dearest  friends, 
and  was  with  her  to  the  end  of  her  fatal  illness. 
Irving's  account  of  the  beautiful  American  Jewess, 
full  of  devotion  to  the  faith  of  her  fathers,  is  said  to 
have  given  Scott  the  original  of  the  very  person 
that  was  needed  in  his  tale. 

We  cannot  follow  Irving  through  his  busy  sojourn 
in  Spain  (where  the  travelling  student  Longfellow 
reported  him  at  work  every  morning  at  six  o'clock), 
through  his  service  as  Secretary  of  the  American 
Legation  in  London,  his  receiving  of  an  honorary 
degree  at  Oxford,  where  the  undergraduates,  hailing 
him  as  Diedrich  Knickerbocker  and  Rip  Van  Win 
kle,  gave  him  a  reception  very  like  that  which  Dr. 
Holmes,  amid  inquiries  about  the  One  Hoss  Shay, 
and  the  singing  of  "  Holmes,  sweet  Holmes,"  re 
ceived  more  than  half  a  century  later.  It  was  after 
all  these  experiences  that  he  returned,  in  1832,  to 
New  York,  having  meanwhile  declined  official  posts 
at  home  because  of  his  certainty  that  the  life  in 
Europe  would  be  the  best  he  could  live  for  the 
exercise  and  development  of  his  own  gifts.  Home 
sick  he  had  often  been,  and  always  unfalteringly  an 
American  at  heart.  The  town  he  had  left  had  grown 


IRVING  AT   52. 
From  a  steel  engraving  of  the  Bust  by  Ball  Hughes. 


WASHINGTON    IRVING  21 

in  seventeen  years  almost  beyond  recognition.  His 
countrymen's  appreciation  of  him  had  grown  in  equal 
measure.  A  great  banquet  of  welcome  celebrated 
his  return.  "  I  am  asked  how  long  I  mean  to  re 
main  here,"  he  said  at  the  end  of  his  speech  at  the 
dinner.  "  They  know  but  little  of  my  heart  or  my 
feelings  who  can  ask  me  this  question.  I  answer, 
As  long  as  I  live." 

Except  for  his  return  to  Spain  as  American  Min 
ister,  from  1 842  to  1 846,  this  is  what  he  did,  and  it 
appears  that  he  would  not  have  left  his  home  then 
but  for  an  impelling  sense  of  duty  and  the  hope  for 
leisure  at  Madrid  to  work  upon  his  Life  of  Wash 
ington.  He  had  established  himself,  in  1835,  at 
Wolfert's  Roost,  an  old  Dutch  house  on  the  Hud 
son,  in  the  place  now  known  as  Irvington,  and  here, 
until  the  end  of  his  life,  his  affections  were  centred. 
An  architect  extended  the  cottage,  till  under  its 
name  of  "  Sunnyside  "  it  bore  the  look  of  an  Eng 
lish  country-house.  Ivy  from  Melrose  Abbey  soon 
covered  its  walls,  and  old  Dutch  weather-cocks,  one 
from  the  Stadt-house  of  New  Amsterdam,  sur 
mounted  its  roofs.  When  Philip  Hone  first  saw 
the  house  it  was  a  modest  affair  in  comparison  with 
other  country-places  near  it ;  "  only  one  story  high," 
his  Diary  tells  us ;  "  but  the  admirers  of  the  gentle 
Geoffrey  think,  no  doubt,  that  one  story  of  his  is 
worth  more  than  half  a  dozen  of  other  people's." 
Like  Scott,  Irving  took  the  greatest  pleasure  in 


22  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

beautifying  and  enlarging  his  establishment,  though, 
unlike  the  master  of  Abbotsford,  he  had  the  wisdom 
not  to  spend  vast  sums  in  such  enterprises  before 
they  were  earned.  Within,  the  house  was  bright 
ened  by  the  constant  presence  of  his  nieces  and  his 
brother  Ebenezer,  and  their  loving  service  each  for 
all. 

The  Western  travels,  of  which  A  Tour  on  the 
Prairies  preserves  the  record,  took  place  before  the 
settlement  at  Sunnyside,  but  it  was  not  in  nature 
for  one  who  had  led  Irving' s  life  to  retire  wholly 
into  rusticity.  We  find  him  making  frequent  visits 
to  New  York,  for  the  play,  for  music,  of  both  of 
which  he  was  heartily  fond.  Public  appearances  he 
shunned,  yet  when  Dickens  came  to  New  York  in 
1842  Irving  could  not  escape  presiding  at  the  great 
dinner  in  his  honour.  They  had  already  become 
friends  through  correspondence,  for  Irving's  delight 
in  Little  Nell  had  to  be  expressed  in  a  letter  to  the 
author,  and  Dickens  in  his  enthusiastic  response  had 
said :  "  Diedrich  Knickerbocker  I  have  worn  to  death 
in  my  pocket,  and  yet  I  should  show  you  his  mu 
tilated  carcass  with  a  joy  past  all  expression."  The 
night  of  the  public  dinner  came,  and  Irving's  dread 
of  the  introductory  speech  kept  him  murmuring 
throughout  the  repast,  "  I  shall  certainly  break 
down."  At  the  proper  time  he  rose  to  his  feet, 
began  bravely,  but  could  utter  only  a  few  sentences, 
and  ended  by  taking  refuge  in  the  announcement 


WASHINGTON    IRVING  23 

of  the  toast,  "  Charles  Dickens,  the  guest  of  the 
nation."  The  applause  was  generous,  and  as  Irving 
took  his  seat,  "  There,"  he  said, "  I  told  you  I  should 
break  down,  and  I  have  done  it."  Later  in  1842, 
while  on  his  way  to  Madrid,  he  found  himself 
called  upon  at  the  dinner  of  the  Literary  Fund 
in  London  to  respond  to  the  toast  "  Washington 
Irving  and  American  Literature."  All  he  could 
bring  himself  to  say,  in  acknowledgment  of  his  en 
thusiastic  reception,  was,  "  I  beg  to  return  you  my 
very  sincere  thanks."  One  Englishman  at  the  table 
was  heard  to  make  the  laconic  comment,  "  Brief? " 
"  Yes,"  said  another  beside  him,  "  but  you  can  tell 
the  gentleman  in  the  very  tone  of  his  voice." 

Going  beyond  New  York  in  his  own  country 
he  was  sometimes  to  be  found  in  Baltimore,  Wash 
ington,  and  other  places.  Another  fragment  of 
Philip  Hone's  Diary,  after  he  had  seen  Irving  at 
a  levee  of  President  Tyler's,  where  Dickens  was 
also  present,  shows  clearly  enough  in  what  esteem 
his  countrymen  held  him :  "  As  far  as  I  could 
judge,  Irving  outbozzed  Boz.  He  collected  a  crowd 
around  him ;  the  men  pressed  on  to  shake  his  hand, 
and  the  women  to  touch  the  hem  of  his  garment. 
Somebody  told  me  that  they  saw  a  woman  put  on 
his  hat,  in  order,  as  she  told  her  companion,  to  say 
that  she  had  worn  Washington  Irving's  hat.  All 
this  was  c  fun  to  them/  but  death  to  poor  Irving, 
who  has  no  relish  for  this  sort  of  glorification,  and 


24  AMERICAN   BOOKMEN 

has  less  tact  than  any  man  living  to  get  along  with 
it  decently." 

It  is  not  the  Irving  of  Washington  and  Madrid 
that  one  likes  best  to  look  back  upon  through  his 
declining  years,  but  the  Irving  of  Sunnyside.  Here 
he  was  at  his  best,  declaring  that  no  period  of  his 
life  had  been  so  full  of  satisfaction  to  him,  working 
through  the  mornings,  and  when  his  work  was  done 
entering  with  zest  into  the  pleasures  of  his  family 
and  their  neighbours.  It  seems  that  he  was  acces 
sible  even  to  bores,  and  during  his  last  illness,  a 
few  months  before  its  end,  could  not  refuse  the 
importunity  of  an  autograph  hunter.  He  did  not 
feel  at  the  time  like  writing  his  name,  but  promised 
to  forward  it  by  mail.  The  stranger  then  inquired 
what  the  charge  would  be,  saying,  "  It  is  a  principle 
with  me  always  to  pay  for  such  things."  "  It  is  a 
principle  with  me,"  replied  Irving,  with  a  sharpness 
of  which  we  are  glad  for  once  to  read,  "  never  to 
take  pay  !  " 

The  work  of  his  last  years,  the  Life  of  Wash 
ington^  of  which  he  was  unable  to  correct  the  final 
pages  of  proof,  had  been  suggested  to  him  as  early 
as  1825  by  the  publisher  Constable.  From  time 
to  time  he  had  had  to  postpone  his  work  upon  it, 
and  the  opportunity  might  never  have  come  if  he 
had  carried  out  a  purpose,  long  cherished,  to  tell  the 
story  of  the  "Conquest  of  Mexico."  But  in  1838 
he  found  that  Prescott  was  at  work  upon  the  same 


WASHINGTON    IRVING  25 

theme,  and  at  no  little  sacrifice  of  desire  and  accom 
plished  work  turned  the  whole  subject  over  to  the 
younger  writer. 

It  was  on  November  28,  1859,  when  Irving  was 
seventy-six  years  old,  that  his  death  came.  He 
had  been  in  poor  health  for  some  months,  suffering 
much  from  sleeplessness  and  a  shortness  of  breath, 
but  at  the  last  a  weakness  of  the  heart  brought  the 
sudden  end.  Lacking  to-day  a  man  of  letters  who 
holds  such  a  place  in  the  affections  of  his  country 
men  as  Irving  held,  it  is  difficult  for  us  to  realise 
the  impression  made  by  his  death.  It  was  as  if  a 
President  or  a  great  soldier  had  died  in  these  later 
years.  Flags  on  shipping  and  buildings  in  New 
York  flew  at  half-mast,  and  the  Mayor  and  Council 
recognised  the  event  as  a  public  grief.  A  multitude 
of  people  bore  witness  to  their  own  sense  of  loss 
at  the  Sleepy  Hollow  Cemetery.  The  day  of  the 
funeral,  December  i,  had  the  fullest  beauty  and 
suggestion  of  Indian  summer — "one  of  his  own 
days,"  the  people  said.  It  is  to  Longfellow, 

"  No  singer  vast  of  voice  ;  yet  one  who  leaves 
His  native  air  the  sweeter  for  his  song," 

that  we  instinctively  turn  for  the  words  : 

IN   THE   CHURCHYARD  AT  TARRYTOWN 

Here  lies  the  gentle  humourist,  who  died 
In  the  bright  Indian  Summer  of  his  fame  ! 
A  simple  stone,  with  but  a  date  and  name, 
Marks  his  secluded  resting-place  beside 


26  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

The  river  that  he  loved  and  glorified. 

Here  in  the  autumn  of  his  days^he  came, 
But  the  dry  leaves  of  life  were  all  aflame 
With  tints  that  brightened  and  were  multiplied. 

How  sweet  a  life  was  his ;  how  sweet  a  death  ! 
Living,  to  wing  with  mirth  the  weary  hours, 
Or  with  romantic  tales  the  heart  to  cheer ; 

Dying,  to  leave  a  memory  like  the  breath 

Of  summers  full  of  sunshine  and  of  showers,  , 

A  grief  and  gladness  in  the  atmosphere. 

Since  his  death  there  has  been  time  to  see  Wash 
ington  Irving  and  the  heritage  he  left  our  letters  in 
the  perspective  of  distance.  Of  the  tangible  debts 
we  owe  him,  the  "  Knickerbocker  idea  "  has  been 
mentioned  in  its  place.  Shall  we  not  also  render 
him  thanks,  with  Joseph  Jefferson  as  a  fellow-inter 
preter,  for  our  national  possession  of  Rip  Van 
Winkle  ?  Mr.  Jefferson  in  his  charming  autobiog 
raphy  tells  us  how  the  (play,  as  we  now  have  it, 
came  into  being ;  and  of  course  Irving,  in  his  nar 
rative,  stands  behind  it  all.  How  real  a  creature 
Rip  has  become  appears  in  Jefferson's  story  of  the 
negro  waiter  at  the  Catskill  Hotel,  who,  exclaiming, 
"  Dat  's  de  man,"  pointed  him  out  to  an  incredulous 
visitor  as  the  very  person  who  had  slept  twenty 
years.  How  the  author  and  the  actor  are  mingled 
in  the  popular  imagination  we  see  in  the  anecdote  of 
Jefferson's  introduction  to  the  Rip  Van  Winkle 
Club,  of  Catskill,  by  its  agitated  president  as  "  Mr. 
Washington  Irving."  To  have  given  us  both  the 


IRVING   AT  67. 
From  an  engraving  of  the  last  portrait  of  Irving,    by  Charles  Martin. 


WASHINGTON    IRVING  27 

Knickerbockers  and  Rip  Van  Winkle  constitutes  an 
achievement  in  American  letters  which  it  would  be 
hard  to  parallel. 

Whether  a  large  quantity  of  his  work  will  go 
down  to  later  posterity  in  any  living  sense,  the 
critic  of  to-day  would  assert  with  less  confidence 
than  Irving' s  contemporaries  were  wont  to  feel. 
The  fashions  in  sentiment,  humour,  and  the  nar 
ration  of  fact  and  fiction  change,  like  clothes,  with 
the  years.  The  works  of  the  pen  possessing  that 
broad  quality  which  is  above  fashions  are  but  few  ; 
and  even  under  the  great  names  in  letters  rigorous 
selection  from  a  thousand  pages  sometimes  leaves 
but  a  score  that  really  live.  The  critic  who  would 
deny  that  these  few  pages  are  not  to  be  found  in 
Irving  would  himself  be  hard  !to  find.  Exactly 
which  are  these  pages?  Ah,  the  days  of  the 
prophets  are  past ! 

But  though  fashions  change  in  books,  in  men 
they  are  invariable.  Whether  such.an  one  as  Irving 
had  lived  before  we  had  a  country,  or  should  pre 
sent  himself  to  a  generation  yet  unborn,  he  would 
still  be  one  of  those  whom  the  world  must  love. 
He  was  beyond  all  things  else  a  gentleman,  with 
the  best  qualities  of  that  undying  race.  If  it  is 
necessary  to  enumerate  and  explain  them  now,  this 
writing  will  have  been  in  vain.  The  poets,  after 
all,  are  the  men  who  come  nearest  to  the  truth,  and 
these  lines  from  the  Fable  for  Critics  certainly  tell 
much  of  it : 


28  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

"  To  a  true  poet-heart  add  the  fun  of  Dick  Steele, 
Throw  in  all  of  Addison,  minus  the  chill, 
With  the  whole  of  that  partnership's  stock  and  good  will, 
Mix  well,  and  while  stirring,  hum  o'er,  as  a  spell, 
The  fine  old  English  Gentleman,  simmer  it  well, 
Sweeten  just  to  your  own  private  liking,  then  strain, 
That  only  the  finest  and  clearest  remain, 
Let  it  stand  out  of  doors  till  a  soul  it  receives 
From  the  warm,  lazy  sun  loitering  down  through  green  leaves, 
And  you  '11  find  a  choice  nature,  not  wholly  deserving 
A  name  either  English  or  Yankee  — just  Irving.'* 

We  did  not  select  the  Father  of  our  Country, 
but  Washington  has  pleased  us  well ;  neither  did 
we  choose  our  first  American  man  of  letters,  but 
had  this  opportunity  been  granted,  we  could  hardly 
have  done  better  than  to  select  —  "just  Irving." 


JAMES   FENIMORE   COOPER 

THERE  is  no  lack  of  testimony  to  show  that 
the  men  of  Cooper's  own  day  were  his  en 
thusiastic  readers.  The  men  of  our  time  have  read 
him,  for  the  greater  part,  as  boys  ;  and  the  men  of 
the  decades  immediately  to  come  —  that  is,  the 
boys  of  our  own  households  —  are  principally  his 
readers  to-day.  Is  not  this  merely  another  way 
of  saying  that  the  writer  who  shared  with  Irving 
the  earliest  honours  of  American  literature,  in  the 
boyhood  of  its  history,  has  taken  his  more  perma 
nent  place  as  the  favourite  of  boyhood  through  the 
generations  that  follow  him  ? 

Irving  late  in  life  is  reported  to  have  said  of  a 
literary  comrade:  "He  and  I  were  very  fortunate 
in  being  born  so  early.  We  should  have  no  chance 
now  against  the  battalions  of  better  writers."  It  is, 
indeed,  hard  for  us  to  realise  in  the  present  "  clash 
of  magazines "  and  new  books  how  meagre  in 
quantity  and  quality  was  the  production  of  Ameri 
can  writers  before  Cooper  attained  his  first  successes. 
Except  for  Irving  and  Bryant,  who  read  his  poem, 
"  The  Ages,"  at  Cambridge  in  the  year  of  the  ap- 


30  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

pearance  of  The  Spy,  a  list  of  the  writers  of  that  time 
would  be  a  catalogue  of  half  and  quite  forgotten 
names.  But  it  concerns  us  less  to  inquire  into  the 
precise  state  of  American  literature  as  Cooper  found 
it  —  a  suggestion  is  enough  —  than  to  see  what  he 
brought  into  it. 

At  the  very  beginning  it  may  be  said  that  no  man 
ever  brought  more  of  himself  into  what  he  wrote 
than  Cooper.  His  early  training,  his  later  circum 
stances,  his  personal  weaknesses  and  strengths  all 
left  indelible  marks  upon  the  pages  of  his  books. 
Consequently  there  is  no  writer  whose  life  is  better 
worth  studying  for  the  light  it  throws  directly  upon 
the  productions  of  his  pen. 

It  was  at  Burlington,  New  Jersey,  on  September 
15,  1789,  that  Cooper  was  born.  His  father, 
William  Cooper,  was  of  Quaker,  English  descent ; 
his  mother,  Elizabeth  Fenimore,  of  Swedish  blood. 
The  Coopers  had  come  from  Shakespeare's  birth 
place  in  Warwickshire  to  New  Jersey  more  than 
a  hundred  years  before  the  novelist's  birth,  and, 
holding  broad  tracts  of  land  in  the  new  country,  had 
provided  their  best-known  descendant  with  a  well- 
inherited  national  feeling.  James  Cooper,  as  he  was 
called  till  the  New  York  Legislature  in  1826  made 
the  family  name  Fenimore-Cooper,  in  which  the 
hyphen  was  not  long  retained,  was  the  eleventh  of 
twelve  children.  A  household  in  those  days  was 
no  scanty  affair,  and  when  William  Cooper,  in  1790, 


JAMES   FENIMORE   COOPER        31 

transported  his  establishment  from  Burlington  to 
the  place  that  was  to  bear  the  name  of  Cooperstown, 
the  cavalcade  numbered  fifteen  persons.  Round 
and  about  the  head-waters  of  the  Susquehanna,  the 
father  of  the  novelist  had  recently  become  possessed 
of  thousands  of  acres  of  land,  and  here,  in  1799,  he 
finished  the  building  of  his  manor-house,  Otsego 
Hall,  for  a  long  time  the  most  distinguished  pri 
vate  dwelling  in  or  near  the  Otsego  region  of  New 
York. 

What  is  now  a  prosperous  farming  district  was 
then  a  wilderness,  at  least  on  one  side ;  for  Coopers- 
town  was  a  veritable  frontier  settlement.  The 
young  Cooper  would  have  been  a  strangely  differ 
ent  person  from  the  hosts  of  boys  whose  delight  he 
has  been,  if  the  lake  and  the  woods  at  his  very 
doors  had  not  called  him  irresistibly  to  learn  all 
that  they  had  to  teach  him,  and  it  is  easy  to  believe 
that  his  response  to  the  call  was  eager.  His  books 
themselves  bear  evidence  enough  that  his  knowledge 
and  love  of  the  woods  came  to  him  at  the  time  when 
the  mind  receives  its  enduring  impressions.  The 
life  at  his  father's  house  through  these  early  years 
was  also  full  of  expanding  influences.  The  con 
quest  of  the  wilderness  and  the  furtherance  of 
large-minded  plans  for  the  future  of  a  new  commu 
nity  are  not  always  joined,  as  they  were  in  the 
Cooper  family,  with  a  domestic  life  of  grace  and 
refinement.  The  growing  town  of  Judge  William 


32  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

Cooper's  building  drew  to  itself  a  population  of 
more  than  common  diversity  and  strength.  At 
the  Hall  many  distinguished  guests  found  enter 
tainment.  Talleyrand  was  one  of  them,  and  refer 
ence  is  often  made  to  an  acrostic  he  is  said  to  have 
written  in  honour  of  the  novelist's  sister  Anna,  who 
was  killed  in  her  twenty-third  year,  1800,  by  a  fall 
from  a  horse.  As  the  lines  are  not  often  seen,  they 
are  transcribed  here  from  a  local  history : 

"  Aimable  philosophe  au  printems  de  son  age, 
Ni  les  terns,  ni  les  lieux  n'alterent  son  esprit ; 
Ne  cedant  qu'a  ses  gouts,  simple  et  sans  etalage, 
Au  milieu  des  deserts,  elle  lit,  pense,  ecrit. 

"  Cultivez,  belle  Anna,  votre  gout  pour  1'etude ; 
On  ne  saurait  ici  mieux  employer  son  terns ; 
Otsego  n'est  pas  gai  —  mais  tout  est  habitude; 
Paris  vous  deplairait  fort  au  premier  moment ; 
Et  qui  jouit  de  soi  dans  une  solitude, 
Rentrant  au  monde,  est  sur  d'en  faire  rornement." 

However  truly  the  statesman  might  have  written 
"  Otsego  nest  pas  gai"  it  was  not  for  gaiety,  but  for 
education  that  the  young  Cooper  left  it.  His  first 
important  schooling  was  at  the  hands  of  the  Eng 
lish  rector  of  St.  Peter's  Church  in  Albany,  whence 
it  is  not  unlikely  that  he  carried  to  Yale  College  the 
strong  preference  for  the  Anglican  form  of  worship 
and  Church  government,  which,  with  an  equally 
violent  feeling  against  Puritans  and  New  Englanders, 
he  carried  through  life  and  into  many  of  his  stories. 


O  o 

J  5 

<  '~ 

a  -s 


I        •" 
h        P 

I      I 


JAMES    FENIMORE   COOPER        33 

For  all  his  churchmanship  he  did  not  present  him 
self  for  confirmation  like  Irving,  as  a  boy,  but  waited 
until  the  very  year  of  his  death  ;  both  of  them, 
however,  were  for  a  time  delegates  to  the  diocesan 
convention  of  New  York.  What  Cooper  took 
with  him  to  college  was  merely  a  boy's  feeling  on 
all  subjects,  for  he  was  only  thirteen  when  he 
entered  the  Class  of  1 806  in  the  second  term  of  its 
Freshman  year,  with  but  one  classmate  younger 
than  himself.  A  disposition  to  see  more  of  the 
country  and  waters  about  New  Haven  than  of  his 
books,  and  the  participation  in  his  Junior  year  in  a 
frolic  which  the  Faculty  considered  a  weightier 
offence  than  his  father  would  have  had  them  think 
it,  put  an  end  to  his  collegiate  life.  Judge  Cooper, 
a  prominent  Federalist  and  several  times  a  member 
of  Congress,  had  no  difficulty  in  securing  his  son's 
appointment  as  a  midshipman  in  the  navy,  and  the 
boy  for  nearly  a  year  had  the  preliminary  training 
of  many  of  our  naval  officers  while  yet  there  was  no 
Annapolis  Academy  —  before  the  mast  on  a  mer 
chantman.  On  the  ship  Sterling  he  sailed  to  Lon 
don  and  Gibraltar,  and  as  a  quick-minded,  active 
youth  won  from  the  sea  a  species  of  teaching  which 
served  his  later  purposes  as  well  as  his  early  knowl 
edge  of  the  woods.  When  his  commission,  dated 
January  i,  1808,  made  a  full-fledged  midshipman  of 
him,  he  saw  a  few  years  of  service  on  Lake  Ontario 
and  Lake  Champlain ;  but  his  marriage,  in  1811,  to 

3 


34  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

Miss  De  Lancey,  a  sister  of  the  Bishop  of  Western 
New  York,  divorced  him  from  the  sea.  In  the 
waters  about  Hell  Gate  and  Shelter  Island,  well 
known  to  modern  yachtsmen,  one  finds  that  he  sailed 
enthusiastically  for  pleasure,  as,  indeed,  throughout 
his  life  he  betook  himself  to  boats  and  the  woods 
whenever  it  was  possible. 

The  seeker  for  personalia  touching  Cooper's  early 
days  must  often  have  thought  it  the  pity  of  pities  that 
on  his  death-bed  he  expressed  to  his  family  a  wish, 
naturally  regarded  as  a  command,  that  no  biography 
of  him  should  come  from  them.  Family  papers, 
therefore,  have  had  no  such  publicity  as  in  many 
another  instance.  It  was  in  his  family  life  that  the 
best  side  of  Cooper's  nature,  as  time  developed  it, 
was  shown,  yet  the  lips  of  those  who  only  could 
reveal  his  gentler  characteristics,  and  give  the  world 
a  fair  acquaintance  with  the  whole  man,  have  been 
for  the  most  part  sealed.  His  daughter,  Susan 
Fenimore  Cooper,  in  the  introductions  written  for 
his  novels  since  his  death,  gives  many  random 
glimpses  of  the  loveable  qualities  of  her  father  ;  but 
no  complete  picture,  painted  with  all  the  colours 
that  might  have  entered  into  it,  has  ever  been 
drawn.  Until  Professor  Lounsbury's  excellent 
life  of  Cooper  appeared  in  1882,  there  was  no 
more  adequate  account  of  his  career  than  that 
contained  in  Bryant's  memorial  oration  delivered 
five  months  after  his  death. 


JAMES    FENIMORE    COOPER        35 

One  must  be  content,  therefore,  with  a  slender 
knowledge  of  Cooper's  earlier  years.  Bits  of  sug 
gestion  show  his  young  manhood  to  have  been 
vigorous  and  spirited  in  body  and  mind.  One 
anecdote,  preserved  in  the  annals  of  Cooperstown, 
may  not  be  too  trivial  to  repeat.  It  is  probably 
of  the  time  while  Cooper  was  a  midshipman,  and 
at  home  on  a  furlough.  A  foot-race  was  to  be  run 
through  certain  streets  of  the  village,  for  the  prize 
of  a  basket  of  fruit.  While  Cooper  and  his  com 
petitor  were  preparing  to  start,  a  little  girl  stood  by, 
full  of  eagerness  for  the  exciting  event.  Cooper 
quickly  turned  and  picked  her  up  in  his  arms. 
"  I  '11  carry  her  with  me,  and  beat  you  !  "  he  ex 
claimed,  and  away  they  went,  Cooper  with  his 
laughing  burden,  the  other  runner  untrammelled. 
It  is  almost  needless  to  add  that  Cooper  won  the 
race,  else  why  should  the  story  have  been  pre 
served  ? 

Nearly  ten  years  passed  between  Cooper's  mar 
riage  and  the  appearance  of  his  first  book.  In  this 
time  the  last  thing  he  could  have  called  himself  was 
a  "  bookman."  He  was  merely  a  country  gentle 
man,  happily  married,  of  domestic  tastes,  and  in 
terested  in  improving  the  several  places  in  which 
successively  he  lived,  in  Cooperstown  and  West- 
chester  County.  The  inevitable  anecdote  of  the 
beginning  of  his  literary  career  is  that  one  day,  on 
finishing  an  English  novel,  he  put  the  book  down 


36  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

impatiently  and  told  his  wife  he  could  write  a  better 
story  himself.  She  challenged  him  to  do  it,  and 
his  first  novel,  Precaution,  was  the  result.  Appar 
ently  its  highest  claim  to  consideration  by  American 
readers  at  the  time  was  that  in  England  it  was 
thought  to  be  the  work  of  an  Englishman.  The 
American  prophet  could  hope  for  little  honour  at 
home  unless  the  mother  country  first  accorded  it 
to  him. 

"  God  forbid  thou  shouldst  get  in  the  clutches  of  Blackwood, 
O  Lord  !  how  the  wits  of  Old  England  would  grin  !  " 

are  two  lines  from  some  verses  addressed  by  one 
American  writer  of  Cooper's  early  day  to  another, 
and  they  indicate  fairly  a  deprecatory  attitude  that 
was  commonly  taken. 

But  it  was  not  for  a  man  of  Cooper's  individu 
ality  to  walk  long  in  paths  that  could  be  mistaken 
for  any  but  his  own.  Such  success  as  Precaution 
attained  was  sufficient  to  make  his  friends  spur  him 
on  to  further  exertion,  and  The  Spy,  published  in 
the  next  year,  1821,  was  a  definite  announcement 
both  to  English  and  American  readers,  who  only  a 
year  before  had  seen  the  completion  of  Irving' s 
Sketch  Book,  that  still  another  vital  figure  had  ap 
peared  in  literature.  Of  the  impression  the  book 
created  at  home  and  abroad,  the  attempts  to  identify 
Harvey  Birch  with  various  real  persons,  the  trans 
lation  of  the  story  into  many  languages,  and  the 
adoption  of  the  principal  character  by  at  least  one 


COOPER   AT   33. 
From  an  engraving  of"  the  portrait  by  Jarvis. 


JAMES   FENIMORE   COOPER        37 

individual,  a  French  spy,  as  a  model  for  his  own 
actions,  —  of  these  things,  and  much  besides,  many 
pages  might  be  written  if  this  were  the  place  to 
tell  the  whole  history  of  The  Spy. 

No  time  was  lost  in  following  up  this  eminent 
success.  By  1826,  Cooper's  popular  fame  was  se 
curely  established  by  The  Pioneers,  The  Pilot  (writ 
ten  to  show  that  a  truer  picture  of  sea-life  than 
Scott's  Pirate  could  be  drawn),  and  The  Last  of 
the  Mohicans.  In  each  of  these,  as  in  everything 
else  that  he  did  best,  he  wrote  of  the  scenes  he  knew 
and  loved.  In  his  failures,  the  works  in  which  he 
was  obviously  out  of  his  element,  he  has  been  well 
likened  by  his  biographer  to  a  backwoods  landlord 
of  whom  Cooper  himself  told  the  story.  A  party 
of  gentlemen,  Cooper  being  one  of  them,  stopped 
at  his  inn  one  night  and  asked  for  entertainment. 
The  landlord,  dismayed,  said  he  had  nothing  in  his 
house  fit  for  them  to  eat.  "  What  have  you  ? " 
they  inquired.  "  Only  venison,  pheasant,  wild 
duck,  and  some  fresh  fish,"  he  replied.  What 
more  could  be  wished,  they  asked  him ;  and  his 
answer  was  that  he  thought  they  might  want  some 
salt  pork.  Cooper,  as  time  went  on,  too  often 
withheld  the  venison  and  wild  duck  which  he  had 
already  shown  himself  capable  of  furnishing. 

But  the  "  salt  pork  "  period  of  his  production  did 
not  come  for  several  years  more.  His  popularity  was 
at  a  high  point  when,  having  made  literature  defi- 


38  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

nitely  his  employment,  he  moved  with  his  increasing 
family  to  New  York  City,  and  entered  conspicuously 
into  its  best  social  and  intellectual  affairs.  He  was 
the  founder  and  the  life  of  the  Bread  and  Cheese 
Club,  which  brought  together  every  week  the 
cleverest  men  in  the  town,  and  before  he  sailed  for 
Europe,  in  1826,  a  great  dinner  in  his  honour  gave 
memorable  evidence  of  the  esteem  in  which  his 
countrymen  held  him.  Chancellor  Kent  presided  ; 
General  Scott,  Governor  DeWitt  Clinton,  Charles 
King,  afterwards  President  of  Columbia  College, 
and  many  others  of  almost  equal  note  were  of  the 
company. 

With  a  family  often  persons,  including  servants, 
Cooper  moved  about  Europe  for  more  than  seven 
years,  always  avoiding  hotels  and  establishing  him 
self  in  rooms,  which  were  made  to  seem  as  much  like 
home  as  possible.  Italy  was  the  country  which  most 
won  his  affections,  but  France,  Germany,  Switzerland, 
and  England  were  all  seen  with  an  intimacy  which 
gave  him  some  real  knowledge  of  their  life.  It  was 
during  this  stay  abroad  that  the  habit  of  draw 
ing  comparisons  of  national  traits  fixed  itself  upon 
him.  The  truth,  as  he  conceived  it,  was  always  of 
the  first  importance  to  him,  and  in  his  telling  of  it, 
in  story,  exhortation,  and  controversial  writing,  some 
times  blended  into  one,  he  managed  by,  degrees  to 
step  on  nearly  all  the  toes  that  came  within  his 
reach.  With  a  wider  knowledge  of  the  world 


JAMES    FENIMORE    COOPER        39 

than  most  of  his  countrymen,  he  naturally  became 
conscious  of  American  shortcomings,  and  they  irri 
tated  him.  He  was  no  less  provoked  by  the  dense 
European  ignorance  of  American  life.  It  did  not 
reassure  him  to  find  a  school-teacher  in  Dresden 
genuinely  surprised  at  the  discovery  that  the  Cooper 
children  were  not  blacks.  In  England  he  was 
unable  to  persuade  an  elderly  scholar  of  his  acquaint 
ance  that  there  was  no  truth  in  a  certain  diction 
ary  definition  of  the  verb  to  gouge,  "to  squeeze 
out  a  man's  eye  with  the  thumb  ;  a  cruel  practice 
used  by  the  Bostonians  in  America."  In  France  a 
more  serious  matter  was  the  part  he  took  in  a  contro 
versy  about  the  relative  expenses  of  a  republic  and 
a  monarchy  as  forms  of  government.  His  position 
appears  to  have  been  patriotic  and  just,  but  for  some 
reason  it  was  misunderstood  at  home,  and  materially 
affected  his  popularity.  If  Jingoism  rears  its  head 
in  this  day,  it  was  rampant  in  that,  and  one  who 
cared  at  all  for  the  esteem  of  fellow-Americans  had 
to  be  scrupulous  indeed  in  venturing  remarks  that 
could  be  construed  into  aspersions,  however  remote, 
upon  the  American  eagle.  Cooper  did  not  care, 
and  consequently  estranged  many  of  his  country 
men  ;  and  readers  abroad,  finding  as  many  flings  at 
themselves  as  at  Americans,  could  not  regard  him 
with  any  kinder  feeling. 

Yet  it  would  be  unfair  to  leave  the  impression 
that  Cooper's  European  days  were  given  over  to 


4o  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

conflict.  There  is  constantly  the  fair  background 
of  his  family  life,  the  sharing  of  all  his  pleasures 
with  those  he  loved,  the  putting  aside  of  his  work, 
even  an  unfinished  page,  to  join  in  a  game  of  back 
gammon  or  chess  or  to  play  with  his  children. 
There  are  glimpses  of  high  friendships,  such  as 
that  with  Lafayette.  There  is  the  meeting  in  Paris 
with  Sir  Walter  Scott. 

"  Est-ce  Monsieur  Cooper  que  j'ai  Thonneur 
devoir?" 

"  Monsieur,  je  m'appelle  Cooper." 

"  Eh  bien,  done,  je  suis  Walter  Scott."  A  hearty 
greeting,  each  to  each,  ended  with  Sir  Walters  sud 
denly  recollecting  himself,  and  saying,  <c  Well,  here 
have  I  been  -parley  vooing  to  you  in  a  way  to  sur 
prise  you,  no  doubt,  but  these  Frenchmen  have  got 
my  tongue  so  set  to  their  lingo  that  I  have  half 
forgotten  my  own  language."  It  is  a  delight  to 
read  of  the  talk  that  followed,  and  worthy  of  re 
membrance  to  find  "  the  American  Scott "  in  these 
days  calling  himself  a  chip  from  the  block  of  the 
great  romancer,  and  speaking  of  Sir  Walter  as 
"  my  sovereign."  Nor  should  it  be  forgotten  that 
Cooper's  years  in  Europe  were  full  of  literary 
achievement.  The  Prairie,  The  Red  Rover,  and  The 
Water  Witch  were  all  written  during  his  absence 
from  America,  besides  four  other  tales  of  varying 
merit  and  several  productions  outside  the  field  of 
fiction.  For  future  use,  moreover,  Cooper  gathered 


COOPER  AT  45. 

From  the  reproduction  of  an   original   drawing,  in  the  "New  Monthly 
Magazine,"  London,  April  4,   1834. 


JAMES   FENIMORE   COOPER        41 

the  material  for  ten  volumes  of  travel  published 
after  his  return. 

It  was  in  1833  that  he  set  foot  again  on  his  native 
soil,  never  to  leave  it.  All  the  growth  of  New  York 
and  much  of  the  development  of  the  country  appeared 
to  him  a  movement  in  the  wrong  direction,  —  away 
from  distinction  and  toward  commonplace.  A  din 
ner,  like  the  one  which  marked  his  departure,  was 
suggested  on  his  return,  but  feeling  or  imagining 
that  his  countrymen  were  in  no  real  sympathy  with 
him,  he  declined  the  honour.  He  took  up  his 
abode  in  Cooperstown,  renovated  Otsego  Hall 
(where  before  his  death  seventeen  new  works  of 
fiction  were  written),  and  had  the  misfortune  to 
enter  at  once  into  a  controversy  with  his  fellow- 
townsmen. 

Cooper  was  in  the  right,  and  the  Cooperstown 
folk  were  wrong.  They  were  not  the  owners,  as 
they  thought  they  were,  of  Three-Mile  Point,  a 
portion  of  the  Cooper  property,  which  they  had 
long  used  as  a  pleasure  ground.  He  warned  them 
against  trespassing,  and  they  passed  resolutions,  full 
of  scorn  for  "  one  J.  Fenimore  Cooper,"  and  de 
nouncing  "any  man  as  sycophant  who  has,  or  shall, 
ask  permission  of  James  F.  Cooper  to  visit  the 
Point  in  question."  The  newspapers  took  the 
people's  side,  and  printed  false  accounts  of  the 
difficulty.  Cooper  demanded  their  retraction,  and 
when  it  was  not  made  sued  the  editors  for  libel. 


42  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

The  courts  upheld  his  attitude  and  granted  verdicts 
in  his  favour.  Thereupon  the  Whig  press  of  the 
country  pounced  upon  him,  and,  not  forgetful  of 
slurs  in  his  books  upon  the  newspaper  fraternity, 
said  every  evil  thing  of  him  which  they  could  un 
earth  or  invent.  From  the  portion  of  an  unpub 
lished  letter  of  1839,  here  reproduced  in  fac-simile, 
the  reader  may  see  not  only  what  manner  of  hand 
writing  was  Cooper's,  but  how  positive  were  his 
convictions  in  the  matter  of  "  The  Point." 

Bryant  is  said  to  have  heard  Cooper  tell  a  story 
of  a  disputatious  man,  who  was  confronted  in  argu 
ment  with  the  familiar  speech,  "  Why,  it  is  as  plain 
as  that  two  and  two  make  four."  "  But  I  deny  that 
too,"  was  the  reply, "  for  two  and  two  make  twenty- 
two."  Cooper,  indeed,  was  not  wholly  unlike  that 
person.  Not  content  with  a  legal  verdict,  he  in 
judiciously  undertook  to  have  the  last  word,  and  to 
put  it  into  the  form  of  fiction.  In  1838  appeared 
the  two  novels  Homeward  Bound  and  Home  as  Found 
which  attempted  to  speak  this  word.  They  tell  the 
story  of  an  insufferable  family  of  Effinghams  who 
returned  from  abroad  to  their  American  home,  and 
found  everything  here,  especially  the  newspapers, 
common  and  unclean.  The  Three-Mile  Point 
controversy  entered  under  its  very  name  into  the 
circumstances  of  the  second  story,  and  it  was  im 
possible  not  to  identify  one  of  the  Effinghams  with 
Cooper  himself.  He  was  a  person  "  whose  fine, 


5 

Q 
2 

ffi 


CH 
O 
O 
<J 


44  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

curvilinear  face,"  as  we  are  informed  on  a  certain 
page,  "  curled  even  more  than  usual  with  con 
tempt."  The  writer's  best  friends  trembled  at  the 
lack  of  judgment  the  books  revealed.  "  I  think," 
wrote  Greenough,  the  sculptor,  a  devoted  friend, 
"  you  lose  your  hold  on  the  American  public  by 
rubbing  down  their  shins  with  brickbats  as  you  do." 
In  the  diary  of  an  unprejudiced  person  of  the  time 
is  found  the  frank  declaration  that  the  books  were 
"  more  worthy  of  the  talents  of  a  silly  girl  than  of 
the  matured  genius  of  the  author  of  The  Spy  and 
The  Pioneers.''  And  verily  Cooper  never  set  forth 
more  undeniable  "  salt  pork." 

If  the  books  were  injudicious  and  private  opinions 
unfavourable,  the  newspapers  were  shameless  in 
their  reviews.  They  remembered  old  scores,  and  did 
not  confine  themselves  to  criticising  the  stories,  but 
attacked  the  writer,  his  motives,  and  his  character. 
This  was  more  than  Cooper  could  endure,  and  right 
and  left  he  began  suing  the  editors  again  for  libel. 
They  made  light  of  the  trouble  at  first,  but  as  suit 
after  suit  went  against  them,  they  were  sobered,  and, 
after  several  years  of  litigation,  silenced.  In  the 
trials  Cooper  was  practically  his  own  counsel,  and 
pleaded  his  cases  successfully  against  the  best  lawyers 
of  New  York  State. 

No  editor  who  attacked  him  was  too  prominent 
to  escape  his  demand  for  justice.  Thurlow  Weed, 
of  the  Albany  Journal,,  and  Horace  Greeley,  of  the 


JAMES    FENIMORE   COOPER        45 

Tribune,  had  to  pay  the  piper  with  their  humbler 
brethren  for  liberties  taken  with  Cooper's  good 
fame.  There  is  a  curious  bit  in  Weed's  own  ac 
count  of  the  matter.  He  tells  us  that  on  his  way 
to  one  of  the  Cooper  trials  he  picked  up  a  new  book 
to  shorten  the  journey.  It  "proved  to  be  Mr. 
Cooper's  Two  Admirals,  received  from  New  York 
that  morning.  I  commenced  reading  it  in  the  cars, 
and  became  so  charmed  with  it  that  I  took  it  with 
me  into  the  court-room,  and  occupied  every  inter 
val  that  my  attention  could  be  withdrawn  from  the 
trial  in  its  perusal."  Plaintiff  and  defendant  have 
rarely  faced  each  other  under  stranger  conditions. 

Greeley's  first  offence  lay  in  printing  Weed's 
jocular  account  of  a  suit  that  went  against  him,  and 
the  Tribune  was  promptly  brought  to  book.  The 
humourous  pen  of  its  editor  soon  raised  a  gen 
eral  laugh.  "  His  fun/'  he  wrote  of  Cooper,  "  did 
seem  to  us  rather  inhu —  Hallo  there!  we  had 
like  to  put  our  foot  right  into  it  again,  after  all  our 
tuition."  And  farther  on  one  reads :  "  It  seemed 
to  us,  considering  the  present  relations  of  the 
parties,  most  ungen —  There  we  go  again!  We 
mean  to  say  that  the  whole  of  this  part  of 
Mr.  Cooper's  speech  grated  upon  our  feelings 
rather  harshly.  We  believe  that  is  n't  a  libel. 
(This  talking  with  a  gag  in  the  mouth  is  rather 
awkward  at  first,  but  we  '11  get  the  hang  of  it  in 
time.  Have  patience  with  us,  Fenimore,  on  one 


46  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

side,  and  the  Public  on  the  other,  till  we  nick  it.)  " 
These  unfinished  words  —  it  is  somewhat  difficult 
of  belief —  were  made  the  ground  for  a  second  suit 
against  Greeley,  which  seems,  however,  not  to  have 
been  pressed  to  a  trial. 

The  most  important  suit  of  all  was  brought 
against  the  New  York  Commercial  Advertiser  for  its 
review  of  Cooper's  admirable  Naval  History.  He 
had  tried  to  get  at  the  truth  about  the  battle  of 
Lake  Erie,  and  because  he  did  not  glorify  the 
popular  Commodore  Perry  at  the  expense  of  the 
unpopular  Commodore  Elliott,  he  found  himself 
and  his  work  ruthlessly  condemned.  He  deter 
mined  to  have  it  shown  that  he  had  told  truths,  his 
reviewer  lies.  The  case  involved  too  many  nice 
distinctions  to  be  safe  in  the  hands  of  an  ordinary 
jury,  and  was  entrusted  to  three  eminent  referees. 
There  must  have  been  a  feeling  of  relief,  by  the 
way,  among  men  liable  to  be  drawn  for  jury  duty, 
since  in  a  previous  case  the  twelve  good  men  and 
true  had  been  obliged  to  listen  to  the  reading  aloud 
of  both  volumes  of  Home  as  Found;  and  this  case, 
it  may  be  noted  with  little  surprise,  was  one  of  the 
few  which  Cooper  lost.  In  the  Naval  History  suit, 
the  referees  heard  for  five  days  all  that  was  to  be 
said  on  each  side,  and  after  Cooper's  summing  up 
of  his  own  contention  in  a  speech  of  remarkable 
skill  and  force,  occupying  in  all  eight  hours,  a  ver 
dict  was  returned  setting  the  historian  altogether  in 


<      c 
ffi    .2 


O     I 


JAMES   FENIMORE   COOPER        47 

the  right.  It  was  a  distinguished  personal  victory, 
possible  only  to  a  strong  man,  who  had  shown 
himself  the  stronger  through  the  very  unpopularity 
of  the  course  he  followed  to  a  successful  end. 
This  was  in  1842,  and  then  the  newspaper  attacks 
and  suits  came  practically  to  an  end.  It  should 
always  be  remembered  that  Cooper  brought  these 
suits  on  questions  of  truth,  not  of  opinion,  ques 
tions  in  which  he  and  not  the  work  of  his  imagi 
nation  was  involved ;  and  to  see  the  single-handed, 
sturdy  fighter  come  out  of  the  combat  so  clearly 
the  winner  is  one  of  the  spectacles  in  which  the 
Anglo-Saxon  in  a  man  rejoices. 

After  this  period  of  battle  there  were  nearly  ten 
years  of  life  left  to  Cooper,  and  he  did  not  waste 
them.  In  the  midst  of  the  lawsuits  he  had  written 
The  Pathfinder  (1840)  and  The  Deerslayer  (1841), 
completing,  by  supplying  the  first  and  middle  por 
tions,  the  sequence  of  stories  in  which  he  himself 
thought  his  fame  had  the  strongest  hope  of  con 
tinuance.  Outwardly,  the  last  years  of  his  life  were 
uneventful,  but  they  were  crowded  with  literary 
activity.  This,  however,  failed  to  restore  the  popu 
larity  which  for  many  reasons  had  in  part  deserted 
him.  It  would  be  foolish  to  suppose  that  Cooper 
was  indifferent  to  the  success  of  his  writings.  As 
early  as  1825  his  constant  friend,  Bryant,  wrote  to 
R.  H.  Dana  concerning  a  proposed  review  of  The 
Last  of  the  Mohicans  :  "  Ah,  sir  !  he  is  too  sensitive 


48  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

a  creature  for  me  to  touch.  He  seems  to  think 
his  own  works  his  own  property  instead  of  being 
the  property  of  the  public,  to  whom  he  has  given 
them."  In  an  unpublished  letter  of  1841  Cooper 
made  the  frank  avowal :  "  I  have  lost  most  of  my 
interest  in  this  country."  To  another  correspond 
ent,  in  a  letter  also  unpublished,  he  wrote  in  1 846  : 
"  If  I  were  fifteen  years  younger  I  would  certainly 
go  abroad  and  never  return.  I  can  say  with  Wol- 
sey,  c  If  I  had  served  my  God  with  half  the  zeal 
I  Ve  served  my  country '/  it  would  have  been  better 
for  me."  Yet  with  all  the  changes  which  his  fame 
suffered,  the  man  remained  the  same  through  this 
last  portion  of  his  life.  Those  who  knew  him  best 
loved  him  best.  Those  who  knew  him  and  under 
stood  him  least  made  most  of  the  faults,  which  fre 
quently  did  not  lie  far  beneath  the  surface.  The 
outward  show  and  the  inner  motive  are  often  so 
remotely  related,  that  it  is  surely  fairer  to  attach  the 
greater  weight,  in  estimating  a  man's  character,  to 
the  testimony  of  those  who  are  most  competent  to 
speak.  Let  us  remember,  then,  the  strength  of  will 
and  conviction,  the  loyalty  to  truth  as  he  saw  it  — 
whether  steadily  and  whole  or  not  —  the  affec 
tion  that  gave  his  domestic  life  a  constant  beauty, 
and  let  the  memory  of  his  aggressiveness,  his  mis 
takes  of  pride  and  judgment,  and  whatever  else  may 
be  unlovely,  take  care  of  itself.  Let  the  final  estimate 
of  his  qualities  be  what  it  may,  it  is  a  certainty  that 


•    /C*te** 


From  a  Daguerreotype  by  Brady,  1850. 


o»  THB 

UNIVERSITY 


JAMES   FENIMORE   COOPER        49 

when  Cooper  died  at  Otsego  Hall,  in  1851,  lacking 
one  day  of  sixty-two  years,  a  personality  of  ex 
traordinary  vigour  and  distinction  was  taken  from 
the  world,  and  American  letters  lost  the  man 
through  whom  American  books  had  won  a  wider 
dissemination  than  any  other  single  hand  had  given 
them. 

It  would  be  idle  to  attempt  assigning  to  Cooper, 
the  chief  prophet  of  the  woods  and  the  sea  to  thou 
sands  of  readers  in  many  tongues,  his  exact  place 
among  American  writers.  It  is  worth  while,  how 
ever,  to  recall  a  few  of  the  impressions  Cooper  has 
made  upon  his  fellow-craftsmen.  His  scanty  en 
dowment  of  humour,  whether  in  fiction  or  in  the 
conduct  of  life,  prepares  one  for  finding  Mark 
Twain  the  most  violent  modern  assailant  of  his 
"  literary  offences."  The  humourist  easily  pro 
vokes  a  laugh  when  he  says,  "  It  is  a  restful  chapter 
in  any  book  of  his  when  somebody  does  n't  step  on 
a  dry  twig  and  alarm  all  the  reds  and  whites  for 
two  hundred  yards  around.  Every  time  a  Cooper 
person  is  in  peril,  and  absolute  silence  is  worth  four 
dollars  a  minute,  he  is  sure  to  step  on  a  dry  twig." 
But  it  is  the  fun  and  not  the  unvarying  justice  of 
all  that  Mark  Twain  says  that  makes  his  attack 
readable.  Others  than  he,  equally  worthy  of  atten 
tion,  have  felt  differently.  Balzac  declares  that 
"if  Cooper  had  succeeded  in  the  painting  of  char 
acter  to  the  same  extent  that  he  did  in  the  painting 


50  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

of  the  phenomena  of  nature,  he  would  have  uttered 
the  last  word  of  our  art."  Last  of  all  comes  Du 
Maurier,  bearing  witness  in  The  Martian  to  the 
effect  of  "  Fenimore  Coupere  "  read  aloud  in  French 
to  the  school-boys  of  the  tale,  and  of  their  delight 
in  <c  the  beloved  Bas-de-Cuir  with  that  magic  rifle 
of  his,  that  so  seldom  missed  its  mark  and  never 
got  out  of  repair."  Bryant  claimed  for  Cooper's 
excellences  the  merit  of  being  translatable ;  and 
bright  indeed  they  must  be  to  have  shone  for  Du 
Maurier's  boys  through  such  "  ground  glass  of  a 
translation  "  as  that  by  which  many  French  readers 
have  first  made  the  acquaintance  of  Cooper.  The 
name  of  a  country-place,  "  The  Locusts,"  is  Galli- 
cised  as  "  Les  Sauterelles  ; "  and  where  Cooper  makes 
two  dragoons  tie  their  horses  to  locust-trees,  the 
translator  implies  that  locusts  of  the  insect  tribe 
are  used  as  hitching-posts.  Yet  Du  Maurier  does 
not  seem  to  recall  Cooper  as  another  Miinchausen. 
The  strength  of  a  creative  artist  is  unlike  that 
of  a  chain,;  it  lies  in  the  strongest,  not  in  the  weak 
est  link.  A  few  weeks  before  Irving' s  death,  he 
is  reported  to  have  said  of  Cooper,  in  almost  the 
same  words  he  had  used  in  writing  of  him  eight 
years  before :  "  In  life  they  judge  a  writer  by  his 
last  production ;  after  death  by  what  he  has  done 
best."  And  it  is  the  Cooper  of  his  best  works,  the 
Leather  Stocking  series  and  the  saltest  sea  tales,  who 
is  and  will  be  remembered.  Men  forget  his  fail- 


JAMES    FENIMORE    COOPER        51 

ures,  as  they  have  forgotten  his  altercations  ;  but 
he  still  speaks  that  universal  language  which  the 
young  and  the  people  of  all  lands  comprehend, 
and  the  boyhood  of  American  literature  bids  fair, 
in  Cooper's  tales,  to  preserve  a  long-enduring 
youth. 


WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT 

THE  Mayflower  folk  could  no  more  have 
thought  of  John  Alden  and  Priscilla  Mullins 
as  the  central  figures  in  a  world-read  poem  than 
as  the  direct  ancestors  of  two  favourite  American 
poets.  Both  Bryant  and  Longfellow  had  their 
descent  from  the  union  which  Miles  Standish's 
courtship  brought  about.  Not  only  through  this 
strain  of  Mayflower  blood,  but  from  many  other 
ancestral  sources,  William  Cullen  Bryant  was  born  j 
—  at  Cummington  in  Western  Massachusetts, 
November  3,  1794  —  into  a  rightful  inheritance 
of  the  New  England  spirit  in  its  purest  essence. 
To  say  that  his  father,  Dr.  Peter  Bryant,  was 
known  about  the  countryside  as  cc  the  beloved 
physician,"  and  that  at  the  age  of  sixty  he  won  a 
foot-race  from  a  famous  runner  of  the  region,  will 
at  least  suggest  something  of  his  qualities.  Of 
Bryant's  mother  it  is  told  that  she  kept  a  diary  for 
fifty-three  years  without  missing  a  day.  For  the 
day  of  Bryant's  birth,  the  entry  read :  "  Stormy. 
Wind  N.  E.  Churned.  Seven  in  the  evening  a  son 
born."  If  we  recall  also  the  report  that  when  she 


WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT        53 

rode  horseback,  she  used  to  spring  from  the  ground 
into  the  saddle,  we  are  somewhat  prepared  for  the 
records  of  her  son's  vigorous  longevity. 

But  the  physical  prowess  of  his  race  was  not  its 
only  distinction.  His  father  was  a  man  of  educa 
tion  and  personal  charm,  and  had  good  books  in  his 
library.  He  was  given  to  verse-making  himself, 
and  the  works  of  the  best  English  poets  were  the 
daily  food  of  his  children,  of  whom,  by  the  way, 
William  Cullen  was  the  second  of  seven.  Are 
there  any  such  children  in  this  day  as  there  were  a 
hundred  years  ago  ?  We  are  credibly  informed,  by 
Bryant  himself,  that  at  sixteen  months  he  knew 
all  the  letters  of  the  alphabet,  and  that  his  older 
brother,  before  the  completion  of  his  fourth  year, 
"  had  read  the  Scriptures  through  from  beginning 
to  end."  Much  good  they  must  have  done  him, 
one  is  tempted  to  interpose.  Whether  as  a  cause 
or  an  effect  of  precocity,  the  head  of  young  Cullen, 
as  he  was  called,  was  of  such  an  alarming  size  that 
by  his  father's  order  he  was  dipped,  head  and  all, 
every  summer  morning,  into  a  spring  near  the  house, 
the  treatment  being  continued  so  late  into  the 
autumn  that  it  was  sometimes  necessary  to  break  a 
film  of  ice  for  the  child's  bath.  Before  he  attained 
manhood  his  delicate  health  was  left  entirely  behind 
him. 

It  was  a  stern  school  in  which  Bryant  had  his 
earliest  training;  but  the  rigours  of  old  New  Eng- 


54  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

land  boyhood,  under  teachers,  parents,  and  on  the 
farm,  have  been  so  often  described  that  it  need 
only  be  said  here  that  no  exceptions  were  made 
in  the  young  poet's  favour.  As  a  young  poet  he 
very  soon  came  to  be  known.  When  he  was  about 
ten  years  old  his  grandfather  gave  him  a  Spanish 
ninepenny  piece  for  turning  the  first  chapter  of  Job 
into  verse.  This  grandfather,  it  may  be  said  in 
passing,  was  less  liberal,  if  more  encouraging,  than 
Tennyson's,  who  gave  the  youthful  English  singer 
half  a  guinea  for  writing  some  mortuary  verses  at 
his  request.  "  Here  is  half  a  guinea  for  you," 
said  the  old  gentleman,  "  the  first  you  have  ever 
earned  by  poetry,  and,  take  my  word  for  it,  the 
last."  Bryant  earned  nothing  but  a  little  local 
fame  when  the  Hampshire  Gazette  of  Northampton, 
soon  after  the  attempt  upon  Job,  began  printing  his 
poetical  effusions,  which  were  no  worse  and  little 
better  than  the  work  of  other  youthful  bards.  It 
is  to  be  remembered  that  the  most  serious  early 
production  of  the  boy  whose  chief  activity  in  life 
took  the  form  of  political  writing  was  a  piece  of 
political  satire.  Dr.  Bryant  was  an  ardent  Federal 
ist,  and  represented  his  party  in  the  General  Court 
at  Boston.  Jefferson  and  the  Embargo  of  1807 
were  anathema  to  all  good  Federalists ;  and  in  1 808 
Dr.  Bryant  published  in  Boston  his  son's  little 
pamphlet,  The  Embargo ;  or,  Sketches  of  the  Times,, 
A  Satire  by  a  Touth  of  Thirteen.  After  the  fashion 


WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT       55 

of  the  day  the  piece,  bristling  with  invective  against 
Jefferson  and  the  arch-destroyer  Napoleon,  was 
fairly  spirited  and  clever.  Certainly  it  was  a  thing 
which  few  youths  of  thirteen  could  have  done,  and 
it  was  well  enough  received  to  bring  about  the 
printing  of  a  second  edition  in  1809,  which  con 
tained  various  other  productions  of  the  same  young 
rhymer.  It  is  a  rare  work  to-day,  for  Bryant  quite 
discarded  it  as  soon  as  his  maturer  powers  were 
proved ;  yet  he  who  seeks  may  find  it,  full  of  Lat- 
inity  and  grave  decorum.  Spain  becomes  Iberia; 
Belgia  and  Helvetia  step  forward  from  the  map  of 
Europe.  Even  the  Connecticut  River  winds  its 
way  as  "fair  Connecta"  and  "celebrious  stream." 

Such  was  the  boy's  promise  that  his  father,  sym 
pathising  from  the  first  with  his  bent  toward  letters, 
chose  him  as  the  son  worthy  of  collegiate  training. 
His  mother's  brother,  the  Rev.  Thomas  Snell, 
equipped  him  with  the  Latin  necessary  for  entering 
the  Sophomore  Class  at  Williams  College,  and  the 
Rev.  Moses  Hallock  —  whose  house  at  Plainfield, 
where  many  boys  made  their  preparatory  studies, 
was  called  the  Bread  and  Milk  College  —  guided 
him  in  the  acquisition  of  Greek,  and  received  one 
dollar  a  week  for  board  and  instruction.  "  I  can 
afford  it  for  that,"  he  used  to  say,  "  and  it  would 
not  be  honest  to  take  more."  When  Bryant  entered 
Williams  College,  in  October  of  1810,  there  were 
but  four  men  in  the  faculty,  and  the  standard  of 


56  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

scholarship  was  anything  but  that  of  the  modern 
college.  Such  as  it  was,  it  appears  that  Bryant,  in 
spite  of  the  burden  of  having  brought  a  reputation 
with  him,  was  easily  equal  to  maintaining  and  in 
creasing  his  good  fame.  But  it  is  fatiguing  to  read 
of  unbroken  success,  and  one  of  the  refreshing  items 
of  his  college  history  is  that,  overcome  by  his  own 
laughter,  he  broke  down  in  an  attempt  to  declaim  a 
passage  from  Irving' s  Knickerbocker.  The  incident 
gives  early  proof  of  the  gayer  spirit  which  the  dig 
nity  of  his  nature  often  hid,  and,  moreover,  helps  us 
to  fix  the  sixteen-year-old  boy  in  his  historical  place. 
Knickerbocker's  History  had  appeared  in  1809. 

Two  ambitions  of  Bryant's  at  this  time  were  to 
leave  Williams  and  enter  Yale  ;  but  only  the  first 
of  them  was  fulfilled,  and  that  after  but  two  terms 
of  college  work.  When  the  time  came  for  going  to 
the  more  distant  college,  the  family  finances  would 
not  permit  it.  While  reaching  a  decision  to  study 
law  as  the  surest  means  of  earning  a  support,  he 
gave  himself  that  best  of  instruction,  which  came 
from  a  thorough  reading  of  his  father's  books. 
Then  followed  a  few  years  of  legal  study  in  neigh 
bouring  villages,  and  in  August  of  1815  he  found 
himself  a  full-fledged  attorney  of  the  Common 
Pleas.  After  a  short  experiment  at  Plainfield,  he 
established  himself,  in  October  of  1816,  as  a  practi 
tioner  of  law  in  Great  Barrington,  Massachusetts, 
where  he  toiled  faithfully  for  nine  years. 


WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT       57 

It  is  not  the  young  lawyer,  but  the  young  poet 
that  we  wish  to  remember  ;  not  the  person  who 
described  himself  as 

"  forced  to  drudge  for  the  dregs  of  men, 
And  scrawl  strange  words  with  a  barbarous  pen," 

but  the  student,  who  inevitably  clung  to  poetry  as 
the  expression  of  his  real  life.  "  Alas !  sir,"  he 
wrote  to  an  older  friend,  "  the  Muse  was  my  first 
love,  and  the  remains  of  that  passion,  which  is  not 
rooted  out  nor  chilled  into  extinction,  will  always,  I 
fear,  cause  me  to  look  coldly  on  the  severe  beauties 
of  Themis."  It  has  been  seen  how  early  he  fell  a 
victim  to  that  "  first  love,"  and  through  all  the  days 
of  college  and  law  study  the  Muse  was  his  true  mis 
tress.  As  Bryant  stands  almost  alone  among  poets 
as  one  whose  fame  came  to  him  while  he  was  hardly 
more  than  a  boy,  and  was  only  confirmed,  not 
created,  by  the  work  of  his  later  years,  we  may 
permit  ourselves  to  look  somewhat  closely  at  his 
beginnings  in  literature. 

Thanatopsis  may  be  said  to  have  given  Bryant  his 
place  in  American  letters,  and- the  story  of  its  origin 
cannot  be  told  too  often.  The  unfailing  wonder  is 
that  a  boy  of  seventeen  could  have  written  it ;  not 
merely  that  he  could  have  made  verse  of  such 
structural  beauty  and  dignity,  but  that  the  thoughts 
of  which  it  is  compacted  could  have  been  a  boy's 
thoughts.  The  poem  seems  to  have  been  written 


58  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

while  he  was  at  his  father's  house  in  Cummington, 
in  the  summer  of  1811,  before  he  had  definitely 
begun  the  study  of  law.  Fond  as  he  had  been  of 
showing  his  earlier  effusions  to  his  father  and  others, 
the  consciousness  of  having  done  something  different 
and  greater  must  have  come  upon  him  at  this  time, 
for  it  was  only  by  accident,  six  years  after  the  writ 
ing  of  Thanatopsis,  that  his  father  chanced  to  find  it 
and  the  poem  now  called  "  An  Inscription  upon  the 
Entrance  to  a  Wood "  among  some  papers  in  a 
desk  the  boy  had  used  while  at  home.  Dr.  Bryant 
read  them  with  amazement  and  delight,  hurried  at 
once  to  the  house  of  a  neighbour,  a  lady  of  whose 
sympathy  he  felt  sure,  thrust  them  into  her  hands, 
and,  with  the  tears  running  down  his  cheeks,  said 
"  Read  them  ;  they  are  Cullen  V 

Now  it  had  happened  only  a  short  time  before, 
that  Dr.  Bryant  had  been  asked  in  Boston  to  urge 
his  son  to  contribute  to  the  newly  established  North 
American  Review,  and  had  written  him  a  letter  on 
the  editors'  behalf.  Here  was  the  opportunity  of  a 
proud  father.  Without  telling  his  son  of  his  dis 
covery  or  his  purpose,  he  left  the  poems  one  day, 
together  with  some  translations  from  Horace  by  the 
same  hand,  at  the  office  of  the  North  American. 
The  little  package  was  addressed  to  his  editorial 
friend,  Mr.  Willard  Phillips,  of  whom  tradition  tells 
us  that  as  soon  as  he  had  read  the  poems  he  betook 
himself  in  hot  haste  to  Cambridge  to  display  his 


BRYANT  AT  ABOUT  43. 
From  an  engraving  of  the  portrait  by  Inman. 


[xBWAlf? 

OTTHB 

UNIVERSITY 


WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT 


59 


treasures  to  his  associates,  Richard  H.  Dana  and 
Edward  T.  Channing.  "  Ah,  Phillips,"  said  Dana, 
when  he  had  heard  the  poems  read,  "  you  have  been 
imposed  upon  !  No  one  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic 
is  capable  of  writing  such  verse."  But  Phillips,  be 
lieving  Dr.  Bryant  to  be  responsible  for  it,  declared 
that  he  knew  the  writer,  and  that  Dana  could  see 
him  at  once  if  he  would  go  to  the  State  House,  in 
Boston.  Accordingly  the  young  men  posted  in  to 
town,  and  Dana,  unconvinced  after  looking  long 
and  carefully  at  Dr.  Bryant  in  his  seat  in  the  Senate, 
said,  "It  is  a  good  head,  but  I  do  not  see  Thanatopsis 


in  it." 


If  any  one  to-day  will  take  the  trouble  to  look 
at  the  North  American  Review  for  September,  1817, 
he  will  see  Thanatopsis  in  it ;  not  as  we  see  it  now, 
for  the  opening  lines,  as  far  as  the  passage 

beginning, 

"  Yet  a  few  days  and  thee," 

are  absent,  and  the  poem  ends  with  the  words, 

"  And  made  their  bed  with  thee." 

The  noble  conclusion  is  lacking,  and  in  place  of 
the  introductoryx  lines  that  are  now  familiar  there 
are  four  rhymed  stanzas  on  death  that  were  not 
written  as  a  part  of  Thanatopsis  and  yet  have  merits 
which  would  have  ranked  them  high  amongst  another 
man's  juvenilia. 

To  appreciate  fully  what  the  publication  of  such 
verse  as  Thanatopsis  and  the  other  Bryant  poems 


60  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

meant,  it  is  worth  while  to  look  at  the  volume  of 
the  North  American  Review  which  contained  them. 
We  find  ourselves  carried  back  into  the  very  time 
of  1817  by  a  long  review  of  Scott's  Tales  of  My 
Landlord,  with  copious  extracts.  In  the  last  para 
graph  of  the  notice  we  read  :  "  If  Mr.  Scott  be  the 
author  of  these  works  —  and  we  scarcely  doubt  it  — 
he  possesses  a  genius  as  prolifick  and  versatile  as 
any  on  record.  ...  If  we  do  not  err  widely,  he 
holds  the  tenure  of  his  immorality  \jic\  most  firmly 
by  his  novels."  Evidently  we  have  not  gone  back 
far  enough  to  escape  the  unobservant  proof-reader. 
But  more  significant,  for  our  present  consideration, 
is  the  sort  of  verse  the  Review  published.  It  can 
not  be  that  editors  who,  recognised  so  promptly 
the  beauty  of  Thanatopsis  knew  no  better ;  it  must 
have  been  that,  like  some  later  editors,  they  had 
to  take  what  they  could  get.  What  manner  of 
thing  it  often  was  may  be  inferred  from  a 
single  quotation.  These  are  the  opening  lines 
of  a  poem  "  On  a  Painting  of  Colonel  John 
Trumbull,  representing  a  scene  from  Scott's  c  Lady 
of  the  Lake'": 

"  Amid  the  brilliant  group,  which  liberal  taste 
Selects  to  gild  its  mansion,  and  to  charm 
The  virtuoso's  eye,  the  landscape  fair, 
The  form  pourtray'd  that  from  the  canvas  starts, 
With  breathing  lip  and  feature,  one  there  is 
That  mingles  all  this  magick." 


THE  NEW 


PJUUC  BENJAMIN,  EDITOR. 


I  WORLD. 


WINCHESTER,  PUBLISHER, 
itt  ie  onro!" 


VOLDMI   II  ....  NO. 


NEW-YORK,  SATURDAY,  APRIL  Q4.  1841. 


LITERARY   PORTRAITS,   NO.  1. 


LITERARY  PORTRAITS— No.  1. 

WLLUM  CULLEN  BRYANT. 
We,  this  week,  commence  >  series   of 


We,  this  week,  commence  •  senes  of  portrait!  which 
will  be  continued  from  lime  to  time  in  the  New  W.rld,  and 
which  cannot  fail  to  be  interesting  lo  the  ini.-Jlir,-:,:  rear!,  r, 
who  is  acquainted  with  Ihe  works  of  our  American  writers. 


generally  known  throughout  ike  ceu.try,  as  connected  with 
.  our  gallery— that  of  the  Editor   uf 


become  standard   in   America,  h,,e  b^en  re.publ«hed   in 
England  and  ar«  retarded  with  creat  favor  in  both  countries 


of  Cummington,  Mass  ,  a  physician  of  respectable  rank. 
•William  was >orn  on  the  3/ day  of  November,  1194.  He 

age.  When'but  nine  years  old.  he  compared  for  a  school- 
the.u  certain  noes,  which  received  the  Impnaatv  of  the 
editor  of  ths  Hampshire  Caierte.  »  weekly  newspaper  rub. 
luted  in  NrtOiampic...  -  * 


.^sxss*- 


Instead  of  checking  the  imaginauonof^hii  son^ W-^nj 
ajif  din0cted'it°i"ndn'!h^pt°trr,or,  a*  knowledges  th'.t  he  is 
indebted  to  parental  teaching  for  some  careful  habit,  m  com- 

Jgj  on*  fourteen  ^.jU-r  ^^^ 

-.t^rt^J^  guftgv: 
^eS5etr.r'poll''c"1Jt"'r''p"11''-'- 


V3,°liim*owr!,i'M«2ia?huselt."  "Ae   ""jj^  £",££ 
^e'T.'s'.ldmfti'ed  ?FS!ft£ *!&**&.  "«d  aforwardi 


'in   lM^rreEll.amCBlS?of"dew.Vork,  iasued  iie'lirst 

"«^,r=,^;:L,,^rrz,:- 

wh'cPhTn.°law7"''  ""'  'd"i"""'°' 

ir,,ed  in  volume  "form,  have' h^ly  "appetrej  "in"  !te 
ickerbocker  Magazine "  and   Ihe   "Democratic  Ke- 

Junc,  1SW,  the  poet,  with  his  family,  sailed  for  F.a. 
rope,  with  Ihe  desrjn  ..I  !>,.-  inMU|  »,me  years  to  lite 
rary  pursuits  and  to  the  education  of  tis  children.  He 
visited  Italy  .ndC-rnianv,  re  Mm  l.::n.-ipally  in  Muni,  h, 
Heidleb»rg,  Florence  and  P.M.  Tn  Ihe  spring  of  1S3H  fie 

gelt,  his  associate  in  it:*   -•  ijvri,-:/ I'^i '" '' 

"The  poelu-aJieputanon  of  Mr.  Bryant,"  remarks  a  file 
:rmc-Mr.  Edgar  A.  IW-w  who.-e  puhliJied  sketch  we 
ire  indebted  for  some  facts  in  this  notice,  ••  both  at  home  and 
ibroad,  is,  perhaps,  hij-her  lhau  that  of  any  other  Am-n- 
:«n  \,  England  his  writing  hate  IMlTmInd  wtlkH. 
J-cisI  favor,  and  here  Ihe  pnWv  .ipl.r,,hati..n  h  ,s  !,-  „  d  . 

les  been  denied— nor  can  it  be  denied  that  this  fact  itstlf 
i<  a  substantial  proof  t*  tk)  esttlMMr  and  of  the  e.\'.-n:  ,1 
lhe«e  abilities.  Ko  man  of  Ihe  noblest  order  of  gemus  v  .,< 

5=S':: 

111.111!)  evemptiM  from  Ihe  prevalent  poetical  .fleeta , 

of  hi!  time  ha,  do,..  ,v  •  .|,an  any  one  po.. 

Hive  excellence.  Yet  of  positive  excellencies  he  h.t  nuny  ; 
and  there  are  one  or  two  of  his  ,h,  ,„,,  poems  .  ,,i,  h  ™n,e. 


more  ethereal  tenip.T—tltan  Uiat  >, 
any  y.'n.Tal  or  Mendy  indication." 

We  believe  that  the  reputation 
Poet,"    is   always  accorded    to   Mr 


give. 


Bryant.     His  poems 

3x^ss&xz'£r£:£?z 

opinioo,  Mr.  Bryant   might  ac'iuire  as  u  proee-wriier  a 

utatien  not  iufVr.nr    K-   id.it  whi.  Ii  h-  },.•••  ,u-  nif-\  «-  .1 
t,  wfw  the  subj,cta  oa  which  he    employs  his  p«  of  a 


1  hvaKtm).fr.&mBt  ii  of7h«  stnct^mocmi^Khool ; 

no  paptr  in  ihe  Pnited  Sta«i,  mor«  ably -and  eonea-Jtenlly 

:!i.i,  lu»,  Mi).;,,medthi  .uliiui^.-'ran^;*  l;t  G-'n.  Jackwn  and 


n  Hi.enecaH 


gonil,  Mr.  Bryant  ia  truly  loved.  His  moral  character  i , 
unimpeachable:  a  kind  hniband,  an  affectionate  father-he 
K,,,  E  to  the  «.,!»„»  elp,e»ed  i.  muy  rfhi,  poem, 

i  lir  l:k'N.'..^  in  :hn  ul^ve  *l.v:<  h  I*  T'ry  good.  The  ex- 
prenion  has  been  caught  fay  Ihe  artist,  anil  conveyed  will, 
•inking  fidelity.  Our  admiration  for  Mr.  Bryant  as  a 
poet-oar  esteem  for  him  as  a  man,  would  have  prompted 
u.  to  My  more  ;  Ion  we  could  not  hav.  said  with  any  ju» 


DREAMLETS. 


REDUCED  FAC-SIMILE  PACE  OF  "  THE  NEW  WORLD,"   APRIL  24; 
1841,   CONTAINING  PORTRAIT  AND  SKETCH  OF  BRYANT. 


srrrj 

WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT       61 

Any  comment  upon  the  difference  between  Than- 
atopsis  and  this  sort  of  thing  would  of  course  be 
superfluous. 

In  the  six  years  that  fell  between  the  writing  and 
the  publication  of  Thanatopsis  Bryant  had  been  con 
stantly  making  verses.  It  was  always  his  habit  to 
destroy  far  more  than  he  published,  but  this  early 
period  must  not  be  passed  without  a  mention  of 
another  one  of  the  poems  which  could  least  easily 
be  spared.  It  is  told  that  in  December  of  1815  he 
was  walking  one  day  from  Cummington  to  Plain- 
field  —  where  a  few  years  later  Mr.  Charles  Dudley 
Warner  was  trying  to  milk  his  father's  cows  to  the 
rhythm  of  Thanatopsis  —  when  a  solitary  bird  flew 
steadily  across  the  light  that  had  been  left  by  the 
setting  sun.  Bryant  stood  and  watched  it  till  it 
disappeared,  and  at  the  end  of  his  walk  sat  down 
immediately  and  wrote  the  lines  "  To  a  Waterfowl," 
which,  appearing  in  1818  in  the  North  American, 
went  far  to  show  that  the  earlier  poems  were  not 
merely  chance  shots,  never  to  be  repeated. 

As  a  lawyer  in  Great  Barrington  we  find  him 
serious,  hard-working,  more  fond,  perhaps,  of 
nature  than  of  men,  but  highly  enough  esteemed  of 
them  to  be  appointed  a  tithing  man  and  town 
clerk.  In  this  second  capacity  it  was  his  duty  to 
publish  all  banns  of  marriage,  which  was  ordinarily 
done  by  his  reading  them  aloud  in  church.  Instead 
of  doing  this  with  one  notice,  he  pinned  it  on  the 


62  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

door  of  the  church  vestibule,  where  it  could  not  be 
seen  ;  yet  it  was  the  announcement,  all-important 
to  him,  of  his  own  marriage,  on  June  n,  1821,  to 
Miss  Frances  Fairchild.  How  holy  a  day  it  was  to 
him  whose  simple  religious  faith  was  a  very  real 
part  of  all  his  long  life,  is  shown  in  a  prayer  for 
Divine  blessing  upon  the  marriage,  found  among 
his  papers  after  death.  How  close  the  union  was 
with  her  whom  we  are  permitted  to  recognise  as 
"  fairest  of  the  rural  maids,"  and  the  inspiration  of 
poems  like  "  The  Future  Life  "  and  "The  Life  that 
Is,"  George  William  Curtis  has  told  us  in  saying 
that  "  his  wife  was  his  only  really  intimate  friend, 
and  when  she  died  he  had  no  other." 

With  all  the  seriousness  with  which  Bryant  took 
his  marriage  —  and  his  father's  death,  celebrated  in 
the  "  Hymn  to  Death,"  had  just  made  him  doubly 
serious — he  was  quite  capable  of  writing  to  his 
mother  at  this  time  one  of  the  letters  which  best 
reveal  the  vein  of  humour  that  was  in  him  : 

"  DEAR  MOTHER  :  I  hasten  to  send  you  the 
melancholy  intelligence  of  what  has  lately  hap 
pened  to  me. 

"  Early  on  the  evening  of  the  eleventh  day  of 
the  present  month  I  was  at  a  neighbouring  house 
in  this  village.  Several  people  of  both  sexes  were 
assembled  in  one  of  the  apartments,  and  three  or 
four  others,  with  myself,  were  in  another.  At  last 


WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT       63 

came  in  a  little  elderly  gentleman,  pale,  thin,  with  a 
solemn  countenance,  pleuritic  voice,  hooked  nose, 
and  hollow  eyes.  It  was  not  long  before  we  were 
summoned  to  attend  in  the  apartment  where  he  and 
the  rest  of  the  company  were  gathered.  We  went 
in  and  took  our  seats  ;  the  little  elderly  gentleman 
with  the  hooked  nose  prayed,  and  we  all  stood  up. 
When  he  had  finished  most  of  us  sat  down.  The 
gentleman  with  the  hooked  nose  then  muttered 
certain  cabalistical  expressions,  which  I  was  too 
much  frightened  to  remember,  but  I  recollect  that 
at  the  conclusion  I  was  given  to  understand  that  I 
was  married  to  a  young  lady  of  the  name  of  Frances 
Fairchild,  whom  I  perceived  standing  by  my  side, 
and  I  hope  in  the  course  of  a  few  months  to  have 
the  pleasure  of  introducing  to  you  as  your  daughter- 
in-law,  which  is  a  matter  of  some  interest  to  the 
poor  girl,  who  has  neither  father  nor  mother  in  the 
world." 

It  was  in  this  same  year,  1821,  that,  through 
the  influence  of  R.  H.  Dana,  who  was  destined  to  be 
the  poet's  life -long  friend  and  correspondent,  Bryant 
was  asked  to  read  the  annual  poem  before  the  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  Society  at  Harvard.  To  this  invitation 
he  responded  with  "  The  Ages,"  and  the  result  of 
his  visit  to  Boston  and  Cambridge  was  the  publica 
tion  of  his  first  acknowledged  volume,  a  small  affair 
in  bulk,  but  memorable  as  containing  in  its  eight 


64  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

poems  some  of  the  best  work  that  Bryant  ever  did. 
This  year  of  1821,  by  the  way,  was  a  year  of 
eminent  beginnings,  a  date  of  importance  in  the 
literary  history  of  Cooper,  Halleck,  Dana,  Miss 
Sedgwick,  and  a  half  dozen  others  whose  names 
mean  something  to  the  student  of  American  letters ; 
and  only  the  year  before  —  to  turn  again  to  the  name 
which  fixed  the  Greenwich  time  of  our  early  litera 
ture  —  had  Irving' s  second  success,  the  Skctch-Book, 
appeared  in  its  completed  form. 

Bryant's  glimpse  of  Cambridge  and  Boston  did  not 
serve  to  increase  his  content  in  the  practice  of  a  pro 
fession  for  which  he  had  never  cared,  in  a  commu 
nity  which  now  seemed  to  him  smaller  than  ever. 
It  is  interesting  to  speculate,  as  some  have  done,  on 
what  would  have  been  Bryant's  development  if  on 
leaving  Great  Barrington  he  had  gone  to  Boston 
instead  of  to  New  York.  As  we  look  back  upon 
the  two  cities  as  they  were  seventy-five  years  ago, 
we  can  hardly  wonder  that  he  chose  New  York. 
Surely  the  men  more  truly  representative  of  the 
time  were  there,  and  the  recovery  from  Puritanism 
had  not  then  advanced  far  enough  to  give  Boston 
the  place  it  was  soon  to  take  as  a  seat  of  the  arts. 
But  apart  from  speculations  as  to  what  might  have 
been,  the  fact  was  that  his  disgust  with  the  injustice 
of  a  decision  in  one  of  his  legal  cases,  and  the  con 
fidence  of  his  friend,  Mr.  Henry  Sedgwick,  that  his 
pen  would  earn  him  success  in  New  York,  fell  op- 


BRYANT  AT  ABOUT   50. 
From  an  engraving  of  the  portrait  by  Durand. 


OF  TMB 

UNIVERSITY 


WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT       65 

portunely  together,  and  in  1825  we  find  him  ardently 
entering  upon  the  new,  broader  life. 

The  rewards  of  literature  were  not  large  in  those 
days.  Before  leaving  Great  Barrington  Bryant  had 
been  receiving  two  dollars  each  for  poems  contributed 
to  the  United  States  Literary  Gazette  in  Boston. 
The  "  Forest  Hymn  "  was  one  of  these.  Late  in  life 
Bryant  was  told  by  a  friend  that  he  had  just  given 
twenty  dollars  for  a  copy  of  the  little  Cambridge 
volume  of  1821  :  "  More  by  a  long  shot,"  said  Bry 
ant,  "  than  I  received  for  writing  the  whole  work." 
Nor  were  his  first  enterprises  in  New  York  of  a 
lucrative  nature.  As  an  associate  editor  of  one 
magazine,  long  ago  dead,  and  as  a  contributor  to 
others  that  have  departed  with  it,  his  chief  reward 
must  have  been  in  the  pleasure  of  the  work.  Prob 
ably  this  was  true  also  of  the  lectures  on  Poetry  and 
Mythology  which  he  found  opportunity  to  deliver. 
More  certainly  it  must  have  been  the  case  with  his 
work  in  conjunction  with  his  good  friends,  Sands 
and  Verplanck,  on  the  Talisman,  one  of  those  strange 
gift-book  products  of  the  younger  century,  —  an 
"affection's  tribute"  or  "friendship's  offering,"  in 
which  it  was  difficult  to  tell  whether  the  text  was 
made  to  illustrate  the  pictures,  or  vice  versa.  Some 
day  an  entertaining  chapter  of  our  literary  annals 
will  be  written  on  these  monuments  of  a  superseded 
taste.  In  all  these  early  New  York  days  Bryant's 
friendships  —  with  Cooper,  for  example,  and  the 

5 


66  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

other  members  of  the  Bread  and  Cheese  Club  — 
give  the  brighter  colours  to  his  story.  The  darker 
side  was  in  the  struggle  for  a  livelihood.  When  a 
temporary  assistant-editorship  of  the  Evening  Post 
became,  in  1829,  a  permanent  employment,  he  glee 
fully  wrote  to  his  friend  Dana,  "  You  know  politics 
and  a  belly-full  are  better  than  poetry  and  starvation." 
In  a  few  months  the  chief  editor  died,  and  Bryant, 
with  a  share  in  the  ownership  of  the  paper,  was 
promoted  to  the  vacant  position,  and  here  he 
remained  until  the  end  of  his  life,  nearly  fifty  years 
later. 

It  is  in  part  because  the  life  of  an  editor  is  out 
wardly  uneventful  that  the  earlier  portion  of  Bry 
ant's  career  has  been  dwelt  upon  at  a  length  which 
may  seem  at  first  thought  disproportionate.  Now 
that  we  may  leave  him  established  in  one  chair,  so 
to  speak,  for  half  a  century,  there  is  ample  time  to 
see  what  manner  of  man  he  was.  Such  geniality  as 
that  of  Irving  and  a  few  other  men  in  whom  strength 
and  sweetness  are  combined  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  Bryant's  possession.  Not  quite  for  the  same 
reasons  as  in  the  case  of  Cooper,  it  was  necessary  to 
know  him  well  in  order  to  love  him.  With  an 
endowment  of  reserve  and  equanimity  which  were 
often  taken  for  coldness,  and  led  Lowell  to  write 
of  him  : 

"  He  is  very  nice  reading  in  summer,  but  inter 
Nos,  we  don't   want  extra  freezing  in  winter," 


WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT       67 

he  was  apparently  quite  capable  of  righteous  indig 
nation, —  perhaps  of  something  more,  —  for  in  one 
of  the  poems  which  speak  most  truly  from  his 
deeper  nature  he  writes : 

"And  wrath  has  left  its  scar  —  that  fire  of  hell 
Has  left  its  frightful  scar  upon  my  soul." 

This  might  be  taken  as  one  of  those  bits  of  self- 
accusation  in  which  the  most  blameless  of  poets 
sometimes  indulge,  were  it  not  for  an  incident  of 
which  his  biographers  make  no  mention.  The 
diary  of  a  New  York  gentleman  tells  us  that  he  was 
shaving  one  morning,  in  1831,  when  he  saw  Bryant, 
across  the  street,  striking  a  fellow-editor,  William  L. 
Stone,  with  a  cowhide,  which  Stone  bore  off  when 
the  bystanders  had  separated  the  combatants  ;  and 
the  incident  is  confirmed  in  a  volume  of  reminis 
cences  more  recently  published.  It  is  the  more  to 
Bryant's  credit  that  with  a  natural  temper,  to  which, 
under  the  old  amenities  of  journalism,  he  could  give 
such  vigorous  utterance,  he  attained  so  true  a  poise 
and  dignity  as  time  went  on. 

The  vigour  of  his  character  is  shown  nowhere 
more  clearly  than  in  his  record  as  an  editor.  As  a 
Democrat  first,  as  a  Free  Soil  man  and  a  founder  of 
the  new  Republican  Party  in  later  years,  he  spoke 
through  his  paper's  columns  whatever  he  considered 
the  truth,  in  spite  of  consequences  that  for  the  time 
were  clearly  disadvantageous.  Once  a  mob  threat- 


68  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

ened  his  office,  and  at  other  times,  through  his 
opposition  to  the  Whigs,  the  party  of  respectability, 
and  to  slavery,  he  forfeited  nearly  all  claim  to  per 
sonal  popularity  ;  and  the  Post  suffered  with  him. 
His  remarks  upon  Nicholas  Biddle's  death  caused 
Philip  Hone  to  enter  in  his  Diary :  "  How  such  a 
black-hearted  misanthrope  as  Bryant  should  possess 
an  imagination  teeming  with  beautiful  poetical  im 
ages  astonishes  me ;  one  would  as  soon  expect  to 
extract  drops  of  honey  from  the  fangs  of  the  rat 
tlesnake."  But  such  opinions  as  these  were  merely 
the  penalties  of  independence.  As  more  of  his 
fellow-citizens  came  to  think  as  Bryant  did  about 
the  tariff,  —  that  is,  as  the  New  York  Evening  Post 
still  thinks,  —  as  they  learned  the  sturdy  honesty  of 
his  convictions,  and  felt  the  wise  patriotism  of  his 
utterances,  especially  in  all  that  related  to  the  war, 
the  better  results  of  independence  were  shown  in  the 
editor's  prosperity  and  honour. 

Of  all  the  many  forms  in  which  this  honour  came 
to  him,  the  catalogue  may  not  be  given  here. 
Public  office  of  all  sorts  Bryant  avoided,  though  the 
highest  distinctions  were  put  within  his  reach.  It 
was  to  him  that  all  men  looked  for  the  expression 
of  the  public  sense  of  loss  when  such  men  as  Cooper 
and  Irving  died.  The  volumes  of  his  Memorial 
Addresses  and  of  the  Traveller's  Letters,  written  to 
the  Post  at  various  times  while  he  was  abroad,  tell 
us  how  little  the  haste  of  journalism  was  allowed  to 


WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT       69 

hurt  his  prose.  "  I  would  sooner  the  paper  would 
go  to  press  without  an  editorial  article,"  he  once  said 
to  an  associate,  "  than  send  to  the  printer  one  I  was 
not  satisfied  with."  What  the  newspaper  doubtless 


REDUCED  FAC-SIMILK  OF  AUTOGRAPH  LETTER  BY  BRYANT. 

helped  'him  to  achieve  was  a  quickness  of  mental 
working,  which  stood  him  in  good  stead  when  in 
later  life  he  was  often  called  upon  to  acknowledge 
public  compliments.  We  can  hardly  think  he  took 
joy  of  all  the  tributes  to  his  fame.  To  be  exhibited 


70  AMERICAN   BOOKMEN 

as  he  was  by  the  Governor  of  New  York  to  both 
houses  of  the  Legislature  at  Albany  in  1875  must 
have  been  a  rather  melancholy  pleasure,  however 
fully  he  deserved  his  introduction  as  "  the  most  dis 
tinguished  citizen  of  our  State."  Yet  the  happy 
word  of  acknowledgment  always  came  to  his  lips. 
There  was  never  a  better  instance  of  this  than  in 
the  anecdote  with  which  he  began  his  thanks  for  a 
silver  vase  given  him  by  national  subscription  in 
honour  of  his  eightieth  birthday.  He  told  of  the 
presentation  of  a  silver  pitcher  to  an  English 
militia  officer ;  the  spokesman  for  the  company, 
losing  his  self-possession,  could  say  nothing  but: 
"  Captain,  here 's  the  jug ; "  to  which  the  captain, 
in  a  similar  plight,  replied :  "  Aye,  is  that  the 
jug  ?  "  Of  course  the  likeness  between  Bryant  and 
the  captain  stopped  there,  for  a  most  graceful  speech 
followed. 

Yet  our  heartiest  liking  for  the  man  comes  from 
other  sources  than  his  public  fame.  His  letters  to 
friends,  and  such  knowledge  of  his  private  life  as 
Mr.  Parke  Godwin,  his  son-in-law  and  most  com 
plete  biographer,  has  given  to  all  who  care  to  read, 
reveal  the  health,  simplicity,  and  devotion  of  a  nat 
ure  which  was  not  ill  described  by  him  who  called 
Bryant  a  "  Puritan  Greek."  A  strong  part  of  the 
health  of  this  nature  was  in  its  love  of  health.  The 
child  who  was  dipped  in  the  Cummington  spring 
preserved  his  bodily  vigour  in  later  years  by  rising 


WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT       71 

early  enough  in  the  morning  to  exercise  with  dumb 
bells,  pole,  and  horizontal  bar  for  an  hour  or  more 
before  breakfast,  by  adhering  to  a  diet  of  Spartan 
simplicity,  by  walking,  rain  or  shine,  to  and  from  his 
office,  three  miles  from  his  house  in  town,  and  by 
getting  as  near  to  nature  in  his  life  as  he  tried  always 
to  come  in  his  poems.  Only  a  few  weeks  before 
his  death,  his  second  biographer,  the  Hon.  John 
Bigelow,  asked  him  if  he  never  varied  even  then 
from  his  earlier  rules  of  exercise.  "  Not  the  width 
of  your  thumb-nail,"  was  the  reply.  In  a  shorter 
account  of  his  life  than  Mr.  Bigelow's,  another  writer 
tells  of  walking  with  Bryant  in  the  country,  when 
the  aged  poet  swung  himself  to  and  fro  on  the  low 
branch  of  a  tree  until  he  had  momentum  enough  to 
clear  a  fence,  which  he  did  without  touching  it. 
The  occasion  would  almost  have  warranted  some  use 
of  the  appeal  to  Lewis  Carroll's  "  Father  William," 
—  "  do  you  think  at  your  age  it  is  right  ?  "  Evidently 
the  unbroken  city  life  was  not  for  such  a  man,  and 
as  early  as  1 843  he  became  the  owner  of  "  Cedar- 
mere,"  a  place  in  the  Long  Island  town  of  Roslyn, 
so  named  by  the  poet  himself  from  the  fact  that  the 
British,  evacuating  the  island  in  1781,  had  marched 
away  from  this  particular  region  to  the  tune  of 
"  Roslyn  Castle."  Minute  directions  for  transplant 
ing  blackberry  bushes,  written  from  Europe  in  1857, 
are  but  one  of  the  evidences  of  the  thought  he  gave 
to  his  country  place.  A  visitor  has  recorded  another 


72  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

item  that  should  not  be  forgotten.  The  gardener 
had  nearly  sawed  off  the  limb  of  a  tree,  on  which 
Mr.  Bryant  happened  to  notice  a  bird's  nest.  He 
stopped  the  man's  work  at  once,  and  by  an  interlac 
ing  of  ropes  had  the  limb  fastened  into  its  place 
until  the  young  birds  the  nest  had  sheltered  could 
shift  for  themselves.  Neither  to  Roslyn  nor  to 
Cummington,  where  Bryant,  in  1865,  purchased  his 
father's  house,  would  he  bring  or  do  a  line  of  his 
newspaper  work.  But  each  of  these  towns  possesses 
to-day  —  one  in  a  public  hall,  the  other  in  a  library, 
the  gifts  of  the  poet  —  substantial  proof  that  he  did 
not  regard  the  country  as  a  place  for  letting  the 
mind  lie  fallow. 

Bryant's  quiet  Christian  belief  was  intimately  an 
element  of  his  nature.  Throughout  his  life  it  found 
expression  in  public  and  private  word  and  deed. 
Yet  it  was  not  until  1858,  when  Mrs.  Bryant  was 
dangerously  ill  at  Naples,  that  he  united  him 
self  definitely  with  any  body  of  Christians.  The 
account  which  the  Rev.  R.  C.  Waterston,  of  the 
Unitarian  Church,  has  left  of  the  poet's  baptism 
in  a  "  large  upper  room,"  overlooking  the  bay, 
brings  up  a  picture  of  apostolic  simplicity  and 
beauty. 

A  few  months  later  Hawthorne  met  Bryant  at 
the  house  of  the  Brownings  in  Florence.  Mrs. 
Bryant's  illness  was  felt  to  be  inevitably  fatal  in 
time,  and  Hawthorne,  knowing  this,  wrote  a  few 


BRYANT   NEAR   THE   END  OF   HIS  LIFE. 
From  an  Etching  by  Aug.  Will. 


OF  THK 

tJKIVERSITT 


WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT       73 

words,  which  for  shrewdness  of  insight  have  a  value 
all  their  own  :  "  I  take  him  to  be  one  who  cannot 
get  closely  home  to  his  sorrow,  nor  feel  it  so  sen 
sibly  as  he  gladly  would  ;  and  in  consequence  of  that 
deficiency,  the  world  lacks  substance  to  him.  It  is 
partly  the  result,  perhaps,  of  his  not  having  suffi 
ciently  cultivated  his  emotional  nature.  His  poetry 
shows  it,  and  his  personal  intercourse,  though  kindly, 
does  not  stir  one's  blood  in  the  least."  Making 
some  necessary  allowance  for  Hawthorne's  never 
having  known  Bryant  well,  the  analyst  of  character 
and  poetry  might  extend  this  speculation  far  into  a 
study  of  Bryant ;  but  he  should  not  forget  that 
Hawthorne  pointed  out  the  way. 

It  was  like  a  man  of  Bryant's  well-disciplined  spirit 
to  fill  with  a  great  task  the  hours  of  desolation  that 
followed  his  wife's  death  in  1866.  This  task  was 
the  translation  of  Homer,  and  between  1866  and 
1871,  holding  himself  to  the  rule  of  forty  lines  a 
day,  he  had  put  both  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  into 
the  English  verse  through  which  they  are  now 
probably  best  known  to  American  readers. 

There  has  been  no  attempt  here  to  keep  up  a 
chronological  account  of  Bryant's  poetical  work 
after  its  first  specimens  showed  what  it  was  con 
stantly  to  be.  There  were  other  literary  under 
takings,  largely  editorial,  which  we  need  not  even 
stop  to  name.  But  we  should  give  at  least  a  mo 
ment  to  the  thought  that  Bryant's  work  in  one 


74  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

important  respect  separates  itself  from  the  work  of 
many  other  men.  It  can  almost  always  be  shown 
how  their  books  reflect  the  circumstances  of  their 
lives ;  what  we  see  in  Bryant's  legacy  to  us  is 
that  he  was  a  poet  in  spite  of  circumstance.  It 
may  be  objected  that  the  best  writing  of  any 
sort  is  the  most  autobiographic,  but  surely  it  is 
one  thing  to  draw  upon  our  daily  lives  for 
the  scenes  and  incidents  of  prose,  and  it  is  quite 
another  to  live  each  day  a  busy  life  of  affairs, 
and  yet  leave  the  world  the  richer  for  pages  of 
print  which  give  to  the  life  of  the  spirit  its  true  pre 
eminence. 

Perhaps  Bryant's  strongest  appeal  to  the  human 
mind  is  in  his  view  of  death,  his  thanatopsis,  if  his 
special  word  may  be  made  a  general  term.  It  was 
fitting,  therefore,  that  death  should  come  to  him 
when,  of  all  men,  he  must  have  been  most  ready  to 
meet  it.  Honours  and  years  were  his  in  abundance, 
and  with  them  his  mind  and  body  held  undiminished 
vigour.  On  May  29,  1878,  he  delivered  an 
address  at  the  unveiling  of  the  Mazzini  statue  in 
Central  Park.  The  heat  was  great,  and  Mr.  Bryant 
showed  fatigue  after  his  speech  was  done.  Yet  he 
insisted  on  walking  across  the  Park,  in  acceptance 
of  an  invitation  to  the  house  of  a  friend,  who, 
stepping  before  him  to  unlock  the  front  door,  heard 
a  fall,  and  turned  to  see  Mr.  Bryant  lying  on  the 
upper  step,  on  which  his  head  had  struck  with  vio- 


WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT       75 

lence.  Unconsciousness  followed,  and,  taken  to 
his  own  house,  No.  24  West  Sixteenth  Street,  he 
died  on  June  I2th,  having  entered  the  second  half 
of  his  eighty-fourth  year.  When  he  was  buried  at 
Roslyn,  a  few  days  later,  the  reading  of  his  poem 
"June"  was  a  part  of  the  service.  Indeed,  it  could 
hardly  have  been  omitted. 

By  reason  of  his  long-continued  life,  Bryant 
seems  nearer  to  our  own  day  than,  as  a  poet,  he 
really  is.  Historically  he  must  be  remembered  as 
the  first  of  American  poets,  —  first  in  poetry  as  Irv 
ing  was  first  in  one  form  of  prose,  and  Cooper  in 
another.  The  body  of  his  poetic  work  is  small,  and 
the  greater  portion  of  it  is  manifestly  destined  to  be 
forgotten.  But  with  Thanatopsis  and  the  handful  of 
other  lines  which  seem  framed  for  a  longer  existence, 
shall  we  not  preserve  our  memories  of  the  man 
himself?  For  the  celebration  of  his  seventieth 
birthday  Whittier  wrote  a  poem  in  which  there  is 
a  stanza  telling  one  truth  about  Bryant  so  accurately 
that  we  cannot  do  better  than  to  leave  him  with 
the  good  Friend's  words  : 

"  We  praise  not  now  the  poet's  art, 

The  rounded  beauty  of  his  song ; 
Who  weighs  him  from  his  life  apart 
Must  do  his  nobler  nature  wrong." 


EDGAR   ALLAN   POE 

FOR  a  long  time  it  was  hard  to  get  at  the  truth 
about  Poe's  life.  His  first  biographer,  the 
Rev.  R.  W.  Griswold,  whom  Poe  named  as  his  lit 
erary  executor,  told  such  an  unflattering  tale  that 
since  1850  it  has  been  the  role  of  many  writers  to 
abuse  this  reverend  gentleman.  An  enthusiastic 
French  translator  of  the  tales  inquires  concerning 
him  :  "  Ilnexiste  done  pas  en  Amerique  d'ordonnance  qui 
inter dise  am  chiens  T  entree  des  cimetieres  ?  "  An 
American  admirer  of  Poe  asserts  that  Griswold  ap 
pointed  himself  literary  executor,  paid  Mrs.  Clemm, 
the  poet's  mother-in-law,  a  small  sum  for  the  papers 
in  her  possession,  and  made  her  sign  a  statement 
that  Poe  had  chosen  him  to  collect  and  edit  his 
works,  —  all  with  the  purpose  of  vilifying  the  dead 
man's  fame.  This  is  manifestly  false ;  but  from 
1 850,  when  Griswold' s  memoir  appeared,  until  1885, 
when  Mr.  George  E.  Woodberry,  in  his  biography 
in  the  American  Men  of  Letters  Series,  threw  a 
white  light  upon  many  vexed  questions,  there  was 
hardly  an  attempt  at  describing  Poe  in  which  the 
errors  either  of  undue  praise  or  of  undue  condemna- 


A    EUROPEANISED    PoE. 

From  a  rare  French  etching. 


OF  TKX 

UNIVERSITY 


EDGAR   ALLAN    POE  77 

tion  were  not  obvious.  It  is  now  felt  that  Griswold 
in  the  main  told  the  truth,  though  sometimes  without 
kindness  or  discretion.  In  the  present  sketch  Mr. 
Woodberry's  statements  are  accepted  as  authori 
tative. 

Why  should  the  old,  unpleasant  stories  be  told 
again  at  all  ?  "  Why  do  you  have  the  same  old 
toys  for  sale  every  Christmas?  "  a  lady  once  asked  a 
shopkeeper  ;  "  why  don't  you  get  some  new  ones  ?  " 
"  Madam,"  was  the  reply,  "  there  are  always  new 
babies.'*  And  there  are  always  new  readers — and 
some  old  ones  with  short  memories.  For  both  of 
these  classes,  and  for  more  besides,  Poe's  tales  and 
poems  are  eternally  new ;  and  some  knowledge  of 
the  man  who  produced  them  bears  essentially  upon 
the  fulness  of  their  meaning. 

If  we  were  to  adopt  Poe's  own  stories  of  himself 
we  should  have  to  give  him  in  the  first  place  several 
birthdays,  each  later  than  the  actual  one.  This 
was  January  19,  1809,  and,  as  if  his  life  began 
with  contradictions,  Boston,  the  city  of  his  detesta 
tion,  was  his  birthplace.  But  his  mother  was  an 
actress  —  Elizabeth  Arnold  —  whom  his  father, 
David  Poe,  the  son  of  an  excellent  Maryland  family, 
had  married  against  the  wishes  of  his  people ;  and 
it  is  the  fortune  of  the  children  of  the  theatre  to  be 
born  "upon  the  road."  It  was  Poe's  misfortune 
that  his  mother  died  in  Richmond  when  he  was 
less  than  three  years  old  ;  his  father  had  already 


78  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

quitted  the  scene.  The  three  children  of  the  mar 
riage  were  adopted  by  benevolent  friends  and  rela 
tives,  Edgar  falling  into  the  care  of  the  childless 
wife  of  a  wealthy  merchant  of  Richmond,  whose 
name  of  Allan  the  boy  received.  It  could  not  have 
been  foreseen  that  the  ill-starred  waif  might  almost 
as  well  have  been  left  to  shift  for  himself. 

Through  his  boyhood  there  was  no  lack  of  kind 
ness  in  the  treatment  his  foster  parents  bestowed 
upon  him.  They  were  proud  of  his  good  looks  and 
precocity,  and  gave  him  the  best  of  schooling,  first 
in  Richmond,  and  then,  during  their  stay  abroad,  for 
five  years  at  the  Manor  House  School,  Stoke  New- 
ington,  a  London  suburb.  Here  the  headmaster 
observed  merely  that  the  boy  was  clever,  but  injured 
by  "  an  extravagant  amount  of  pocket  money." 
Poe's  story  of  "  William  Wilson  "  is  said  to  record 
his  own  remembrances  of  the  school.  He  was 
brought  back  to  Richmond  in  1820,  and  there  for 
seven  years  under  the  best  auspices  pursued  his 
studies  preparatory  to  entering  the  University  of 
Virginia. 

It  is  worth  remarking  that  in  this  schoolboy 
period  Poe  made  no  friends.  He  was  at  once  sen 
sitive  and  supercilious,  desirous  of  a  regard  he  did 
not  excite,  and  quick  to  show  his  contempt  for  wits 
less  keen  than  his  own.  These  qualities  he  never 
outgrew,  and  for  the  life  he  was  destined  to  lead 
they  provided  as  poor  an  equipment  as  one  can  well 


EDGAR  ALLAN    POE  79 

imagine.  One  strong  attachment  which  he  did  form 
at  this  time,  however,  is  equally  noticeable  for  the 
quality  it  foreshadowed.  It  was  his  romantic  de 
votion  to  the  young  and  beautiful  mother  of  one 
of  his  schoolmates.  Poe  never  ceased  to  crave  the 
society  of  women  who  could  "understand"  him; 
and  when  this  lady  of  Richmond,  after  winning  the 
boy's  heart  by  her  tenderness,  died  an  early  death, 
the  young  dreamer  would  go  to  her  grave  by  night, 
and  brood  by  day  upon  the  bitterness  of  his  loss. 
She  seems  to  have  been  his  first  Lenore. 

Of  the  youth  who  was  capable  of  such  feelings 
one  does  not  expect  precisely  the  record  Poe  made 
for  himself  at  the  University  of  Virginia,  which  he 
entered  in  February  of  1826.  To  be  sure,  when 
his  university  career  ended  in  less  than  a  year,  he 
took  with  him  the  highest  honours  in  Latin  and 
French  ;  but  he  left  behind  him  gambling  debts  to 
the  amount  of  twenty-five  hundred  dollars  and  a 
reputation  as  an  extraordinary  drinker.  "It  was 
not  the  taste  of  the  beverage  that  influenced  him," 
a  college  contemporary  has  written ;  "  without  a  sip 
or  a  smack  of  the  mouth  he  would  seize  a  full  glass, 
without  water  or  sugar,  and  send  it  home  at  a  single 
gulp."  But  the  cards  were  his  destruction  at  col 
lege,  and  it  was  no  wonder  that  Mr.  Allan  declined 
to  send  him  back  to  Charlottesville. 

The  alternative  for  college  life  was  a  clerkship 
in  Mr.  Allan's  office,  and  it  was  a  matter  of  course 


8o  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

that  Poe  could  not  long  submit  to  the  drudgery  of 
it.  If  again  we  were  to  adopt  his  own  account  of 
himself,  at  least  as  he  authorised  it  in  biographical 
sketches  of  a  later  date,  we  should  have  to  follow 
him  now  to  Greece,  where,  according  to  the  myth 
ical  story,  he  went,  like  Byron,  to  fight  for  liberty  ; 
we  should  find  him,  too,  in  St.  Petersburg,  involved 
in  some  mysterious  trouble,  from  which  he  was 
extricated  only  by  the  help  of  the  American  con 
sul.  The  real,  if  less  romantic,  truth  appears  to  be 
that  going  forth  from  Richmond  to  seek  his  for 
tunes  in  the  world,  he  soon  found  himself  in  pov 
erty  in  Boston,  where  an  obscure  publisher  printed 
for  him  in  1827  an  obscure  little  volume,  cc  Tamer 
lane,  and  Other  Poems,  by  a  Bostonian,"  a  single  copy 
of  which  was  sold  in  1892  for  $  1,850.  The  infer 
ence  from  the  fact  that  the  publisher  in  later  life 
never  associated  the  book  with  the  famous  name 
of  Poe  is  that  the  unknown  singer  was  making  use 
of  another  name.  This  inference  is  borne  out  by 
the  enlistment  at  Boston  of  Edgar  A.  Perry,  on 
May  26,  1828,  as  a  private  in  the  United  States 
Army,  and  by  the  identification  of  this  young  sol 
dier,  who  soon  became  a  sergeant-major,  with  Edgar 
A.  Poe.  This  person,  Poe  or  Perry,  was  granted 
leave  of  absence  from  Fortress  Monroe  when  Mrs. 
Allan,  Poe's  benefactress,  died  in  Richmond,  early 
in  1829  ;  and  it  was  Mr.  Allan  who  applied  for  it, 
and  a  little  later  was  instrumental  in  bringing  about 


EDGAR    ALLAN    POE. 

From  an  engraving  by  J.  Sartain,  after  a  portrait  by  S.  S.  Osgood, 
date  unknown. 


EDGAR   ALLAN    POE  81 

his  foster-son's  admission  as  a  cadet  to  the  Acad 
emy  at  West  Point.  It  was  doubtless  a  relief  to  the 
respectable  merchant  to  feel  that  he  had  thus  done 
his  duty  by  the  young  man,  with  whom  his  sense 
of  kinship  had  been  growing  year  by  year  less 
intimate. 

It  was  in  1830  that  Poe  entered  West  Point, 
having  published  in  Baltimore  in  the  year  before  a 
second  little  volume  of  poems.  Though  his  age 
was  recorded  at  the  Academy  as  nineteen,  it  was  the 
face  of  a  man  of  more  than  the  twenty-one  years  he 
had  really  lived  that  his  fellow-cadets  learned  to 
know.  It  was  their  jest  to  say  that  he  had  secured 
an  appointment  for  his  son,  and,,  the  boy  having 
died,  he  had  come  to  take  his  place.  It  was  no 
great  wonder  that  Poe  bore  the  look  of  age  before 
his  time.  Estranged  from  those  who  had  tried  to 
help  him,  solitary,  sensitive,  and  poor,  and  endowed 
by  nature  with  a  spirit  which,  from  first  to  last, 
preyed  remorselessly  upon  itself, — what  was  there 
to  give  his  face  the  look  of  youth  ?  And  how 
could  such  an  one  have  been  expected  to  adapt 
himself  to  a  life  in  which  self-effacement  is  the  first 
rule  ?  It  made  no  difference  that  Poe  had  chosen 
for  himself  the  military  profession.  He  soon  tired 
of  it,  and  deliberately  brought  about  his  own 
expulsion  from  the  Academy.  Perhaps  this  was 
rendered  the  easier  by  his  reckless  habits  through 
the  six  months  of  his  cadetship.  His  literary 


82  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

tendencies  were  well  known  at  West  Point,  and 
there  is  a  certain  irony  in  the  fact  that  a  third  little 
book  of  verse,  which  a  New  York  publisher  under 
took  on  the  strength  of  the  cadets'  support,  dis 
tinctly  disappointed  the  subscribers  because  it  was 
not  made  up  of  local  squibs. 

Foe's  worldly  prospects,  when  he  made  his  way 
from  West  Point  to  Baltimore,  were  certainly  far 
from  bright.  Mr.  Allan  had  married  a  second  wife, 
and  the  birth  of  a  son  soon  dispelled  every  hope 
Poe  might  have  entertained  of  coming  into  the 
property  which  as  a  boy  he  had  had  some  reason  to 
count  upon.  There  was  nothing  for  him  but  to 
live  by  his  own  wits,  and  for  a  time  the  living  he 
made  was  of  the  barest.  Happily  for  him,  a  Balti 
more  paper,  fhe  Saturday  Visiter^  offered  in  1833 
some  prizes  in  money  for  the  best  contributions  in 
prose  and  verse.  Poe's  story  of  "  The  Manuscript 
Found  in  a  Bottle  "  won  him  a  hundred  dollars,  and 
his  poem  "  The  Coliseum "  would  have  been 
awarded  the  first  place  in  its  class  also  had  it  not 
been  thought  unwise  to  give  two  prizes  to  one  man. 
The  success  was  of  the  greatest  importance  to  Poe, 
for  it  secured  him  the  influential  friendship  of  John 
P.  Kennedy,  through  which,  in  turn,  he  secured 
the  associate  editorship  of  the  Southern  Literary 
Messenger,  a  new  magazine  in  Richmond.  This 
was  not  until  1835,  and  in  the  mean  time  Poe  had 
been  reduced  to  the  narrowest  straits  of  poverty. 


EDGAR   ALLAN    POE  83 

On  one  occasion  he  had  been  obliged  to  decline 
Mr.  Kennedy's  invitation  to  dinner,  because  of  his 
"  personal  appearance." 

But  all  was  changed  in  Richmond,  where  his 
new  duties  called  him.  His  remarkable  talents  as 
an  editor  did  wonders  for  the  circulation  of  the 
Messenger;  and  his  own  pen,  departing  from  the 
traditions  of  commonplace  in  fiction  and  criticism, 
spread  his  fame  abroad.  There  was,  moreover, 
almost  for  the  only  time  in  Poe's  troublous  life,  a 
sufficiency  of  income  for  his  needs.  They  were 
not  great,  although  in  September  of  1835,  feeling 
himself  unable  to  part  with  his  aunt,  Mrs.  Clemm, 
and  her  daughter,  Virginia,  with  whom  he  had  lived 
in  Baltimore,  he  had  privately  married  his  young 
cousin.  How  young  she  was  all  the  world  did  not 
know ;  for  when  the  public  marriage  took  place  in 
Richmond,  in  May,  1836,  Poe's  bondsman  —  under 
the  marriage  law  —  declared  on  oath  that  Virginia 
Clemm  was  "  of  the  full  age  of  twenty-one  years." 
In  reality  she  was  not  quite  fourteen,  and  Poe  was 
about  twice  her  age.  If  this  marriage  with  a  child 
was  ominous  of  evil,  the  future  brought  some  fulfil 
ment  of  good  in  the  relations  of  sonship  and  mother 
hood  which  Poe  and  Mrs.  Clemm  bore  to  each 
other  through  life  with  a  peculiar  tenderness.  A 
weak  man  never  needed  the  help  of  a  strong  woman 
more  than  Poe  needed  it,  and  as  it  was  never  to 
come  from  his  wife,  it  was  well  that  her  mother  could 


84  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

also  be  truly  his.  The  fortunate  circumstances  of 
Poe's  life  were  few  enough.  This  was  one  of 
them. 

Prosperity  now  seemed  easily  within  reach  of  the 
small  family  in  Richmond.  Its  revenues  were  in 
creased  by  the  keeping  of  a  few  boarders,  and  ap 
parently  all  would  have  gone  well  except  for  Poe 
himself.  But  before  he  had  left  Baltimore  his  habits 
—  or  freaks  —  of  intemperance  had  begun  to  get 
him  into  trouble.  It  is  better  to  call  them  freaks, 
for  it  does  not  appear  that  they  were  habitual.  No 
man  so  susceptible  to  stimulants  could  have  in 
dulged  in  them  habitually  and  have  done  one  half  the 
work  that  Poe  did  in  the  world.  It  is  Mrs.  Clemm's 
testimony  that  a  single  cup  of  coffee  would  intoxicate 
him.  For  such  a  man  the  obvious  thing  to  do  was 
to  shun  liquor  as  he  would  shun  the  plague  ;  but 
this,  at  least  for  periods  of  any  length,  Poe  had 
neither  the  will  nor  the  courage  to  do.  The  pros 
tration  which  followed  each  attack  of  intemperance 
was  rendered  the  more  complete  by  his  use  of  opiates. 
It  was  as  if  he  did  his  best  to  incapacitate  both  body 
and  spirit.  These,  in  a  word,  were  the  conditions 
under  which  much  of  his  mature  life  was  led.  That 
they  had  begun  to  affect  his  work  as  early  as  in  the 
Richmond  days  we  are  clearly  informed  by  a  letter  to 
Poe  from  Mr.  White,  the  proprietor  of  the  Southern 
Literary  Messenger.  Its  spirit  of  expostulation  is  of 
the  kindest,  and  a  single  sentence,  if  it  is  based 


VIRGINIA  CLEMM,   THE  WIFE  OF  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 
From  the  photograph  of  a  water-colour  sketch. 


EDGAR    ALLAN    POE  85 

upon  fact,  shows  in  what  need  of  good  advice  Poe 
already  stood  :  "  No  man  is  safe  that  drinks  before 
breakfast/'  It  is  unnecessary  to  quote  more  or  to 
wonder  that  the  first  number  of  the  magazine  for 
1837  made  the  announcement  that  Poe's  connection 
with  it  had  ceased.  •<*-' 

It  would  be  a  sorrowful  progress  to  follow  Poe 
through  all  his  vicissitudes.  There  is  a  monotony 
of  pity  in  the  spectacle  of  the  man  entering  with 
courage  upon  new  editorial  ventures,  making  surely 
for  success  through  weeks  or  months,  winning  the 
admiration  of  his  associates,  and  then,  suddenly  or 
by  degrees,  failing  with  a  completeness  which  ren 
dered  the  brave  hope  of  each  beginning  only  the 
more  tragic.  Such,  in  a  general  way, 'were  his  ex 
periences  with  Burton's  Gentleman  s  Magazine  and 
its  successor,  Graham  s  Magazine,  in  Philadelphia, 
where,  after  a  short  sojourn  in  New  York,  he  lived 
from  1838  until  1844.  Pursuing  through  all  these 
dark  days  the  ignis  fatuus  of  a  magazine  of  his  own, 
he  was  nevertheless  taking  his  place  more  and  more 
firmly  as  a  prose  writer  of  the  first  popularity.  As 
a  poet  he  was  hardly  known,  but  his  stories  and  re 
views  in  magazines,  and  his  excellently  well-named 
volume  of  1 840,  Tales  of  the  Grotesque  and  Arabesque, 
had  secured  him  a  general  esteem  quite  out  of  keep 
ing  with  the  sordidness  of  his  personal  circumstances. 
It  was  in  this  period  not  only  that  his  story  of  "  The 
Gold  Bug  "  won  him  his  second  prize  of  a  hundred 


PROSPECTUS 

0» 

THE   PENN  MAGAZINE. 
A  MONTHLY  LITERARY  JOURNAL, 

TO  BE  EDITED  AND  PUBLISHED  IN  THE  CITY  OF  PHILADELPHIA, 
8Y  EDGAR  A.  POE. 


TO  Tan  rDr,Lic.-Smcc  resigning  the  conduct  of  The  Southern  Literary  Messenger,  at  the  commencement  of  its  third  year,  I  have 
hid  always  in  view  the  establishment  of  n  Magazine  which  should  retain  some  of  the  chief  features  of  that  Journal,  abandoning  or  greatly 
modifying  the  red.  Delay,  however,  has  been  occasioned  by  a  variety  of  causes,  and  not  until  now  have  I  found  myself  at  liberty  to 
attempt  the  execution  of  the  design. 

I  will  be  pardoned  for  speaking  more  directly  of  The  Messenger.  Having  to  it  no  proprietary  right,  my  objects  too  being  at  vari- 
•nee  in  many  respects  with  those  of  its  very  worthy  owner,  I  found  difficulty  in  stamping  upon  it*  pages  Jhat  individuality  which  I 
behove  essential  to  the  full  success  of  all  similar  publications.  In  regard  to  their  permanent  influence,  it  appears  to  mo  that  a  continuous, 
definite  character,  and  a  marked  certainty  of  purpose,  are  desiderata  of  vital  importance,  and  only  attainable  where  ore  mind  alone  ha* 
the  general  direction  of  the  undertaking.  Eiperience  has  rendered  obvious,  what  might  indeed  have  been  demonstrated  a  pritrt,  that 
in  founding  a  Magazine  of  my  own  lies  my  sole  chance  of  carrying  oat  to  completion  whatever  peculiar  intention*  I  may  havo  enter 
tained. 

To  those  who  remember  the  early  days  of  the  Southern  periodical  in  question  it  will  be  scarcely  necessary  to  nay  that  it*  main 
feature  was  a  somewhat  ovcrdono  causticity  in  its  department  of  Critical  Notices  jf  new  books.  The  Penn  Magazine  will  retain  thi* 
.'bait  of  severity  in  so  much  only  as  the  calmest  yet  sternest  sense  of  justice  will  permit  Some  years  cince  el.psed  may  have  mellow 
ed  down  the  petulance  without  interfering  with  the  rigor  of  the  critic.  Most  surely  they  havo  not  yet  taught  him  to  read  through  In* 
medium  of  a  publisher's  will,  nor  convinced  him  thai  the  interests  of  letters  are  unallied  with  the  interests  of  truth.  It  shall  bo  the  first 
and  chief  purpose  of  the  Magazine  now  proposed  to  become  known  as  one  where  may  be  found  at  all  times,  and  upon  all  subjects,  an 
honest  and  a  fearless  opinion.  It  shall  be  a  leading  object  to  assert  in  precept,  and  to  maintain  in  practice  the  right.,  while  in  effect  ft 
demonstrates  the  advantages,  of  an  absolutely  independent  criticum-a  criticism  self-sustained  ;  guiding  itself  only  by  the  purest  role* 
of  Art;  analyzing  and  urging  these  rules  as  it  applies  them ;  holding  itself  aloof  from  all  personal  bias ;  acknowledging  no  fear  save  thai 
of  outraging  the  right;  yielding  no  point  either  to  the  vanity  of  the  author,  or  to  the  assumptions  of  antique  prejudice,  or  to  the  invo. 
hie  and  anonymous  cant  of  the  Quarterlies,  or  to  the  arrogance  of  lho»  organized  c&guet  which,  hanging  like  nightmares  upon  Ame 
rican  literature,  manufacture,  at  the  nod  of  our  principal  bookaellcrs.  a  pseudo-public-opinion  by  wholesale.  These  are  objects  of  which 
no  man  need  be  ashamed.  They  are  purposes,  moreover,  whose  novelty  at  least  will  give  them  interest.  For  assurance  that  I  will  futy 
fil  them  in  the  best  spirit  and  to  (he  very  letter,  I  appeal  with  confidence  to  tie  marry  thousands  of  my  friends,  and.  especially  of  my 
Southern  friends,  who  sustained  me  in  the  Messenger,  where  I  had  but  a  very  partial  opportunity  of  completing  my  own  plans. 

In  respect  to  the  other  features  of  the  Penn  Magazine,  a  few  words  here  will  suffice.  It  will  endeavour  to  support  the  general  in* 
terosts  of  the  republic  of  letters,  without  reference  to  particular  regions ;  regarding  the  world  at  large  as  the  tru.  audience  of  ib*  author. 
Beyond  the  precincts  of  literature,  properly  so  callod,  it  will  leart  in  better  handa  the  task  of  instruction  upon  all  matters  of  wry  gravs 
moment.  It*  aim  chiefly  shall  be  I.  fileau  ,  and  this  through  means  of  versatility,  originality,  and  pungency.  It  may  be  as  well  ben 
to  observe  that  nothing  said  in  this  Prospectus  should  bo  construed  into  a  design  of  sullying  the  Magazine  with  any  tincture  of  tb* 
buffoonery,  scurrility,  or  profanity,  which  are  the  blemish  of  some  of  the  most  vigorous  of  the  European  prints.  la  all  branch**  of  111* 
literary  department,  the  best  aid,  from  the  highest  and  purest  sources,  is  secured. 

To  the  mechanical  execution  of  the  work  the  greatest  attention  will  be  given  which  such  a  matter  can  require.  In  Ibis  itsjttt  it  U 
proposed  to  surpass,  by  very  much,  the  ordinary  Magazine  style.  The  form  will  nearly  resemble  that  of  The  Knickerbocker ;  the  paper 
wiO  be  equal  to  that  of  The  North  American  Review ;  the  pictorial  embellishment*  will  be  numcr-us.  and  by  lie  leading  artist,  of  tb* 
country,  but  will  be  introduced  only  in  the  necessary  illustration  of  the  text. 

The  Penn  Magazine  will  be  published  in  Philadelphia,  on  the  first  of  each  month,  and  win  form,  half-yearly,  •  volume  of  about  209 
pages.  The  price  will  he  $  5  per  annum,  payable  in  advance,  or  upon  dig  receipt  of  the  first  number,  which  will  bo  i*md  on  the  l/st 
of  itaunry,  1841.  Letters  addressed  to  the  Editor  and  Proprietor, 

EDGAR  A.  FOE. 


REDUCED  FAC-SIMILE  OF  THE  PROSPECTUS  OF 
"  THE  PENN  MAGAZINE.'' 


REDUCED    FAC-SIMILE  AUTOGRAPH    LETTER  WRITTEN  BY  POE  ON 
A  BLANK  PAGE  OF  "  THE  PENN  MAGAZINE"  PROSPECTUS. 


88  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

dollars,  but  that  he  wrought  the  wonders  in  cryptog 
raphy  which  —  save  the  mark  !  —  might  have  made 
a  Baconian  of  him  to-day,  and  that  he  foretold 
from  the  opening  chapters  the  conclusion  of  Bar- 
naby  Rudge,  a  feat  which  caused  Dickens  to  inquire 
if  Poe  were  the  Devil.  But  the  substantial  value 
of  such  successes  as  these  was  small,  and  in  1844, 
hoping  again  to  better  himself  by  change,  he 
transferred  the  scene  of  his  struggles  to  New 
York. 

There  was  editorial  work  to  be  done  on  the  Even 
ing  Mirror,  conducted  by  N.  P.  Willis,  and  Poe 
was  given  the  opportunity  of  doing  it.  Willis  was 
all  kindness  and  forbearance,  and  has  testified  hear 
tily  to  Poe's  regularity  and  efficiency  through  all 
their  intercourse.  But  "  Willis  was  too  Willisy  for 
him,"  as  another  editor  expressed  it,  and  Poe,  before  a 
year  was  out,  went  through  the  unfamiliar  proceed 
ing  of  leaving  an  employer  who  was  sorry  to  have 
him  go.  Before  the  end  of  1 845  his  next  venture 
was  a  thing  of  the  past.  He  had  joined  with  C.  F. 
Briggs  in  the  management  of  the  Broadway  Journal, 
had  become  proprietor  of  the  paper,  and  had  had 
to  give  it  up,  all  within  about  ten  months.  In  the 
course  of  this  time,  during  which,  by  the  way,  his 
one-sided  "  war "  with  Longfellow  for  plagiarism 
was  at  its  height,  he  lost  the  friendship  of  Lowell, 
through  whom  Briggs  and  he  had  been  brought  to 
gether,  and  supplied  Horace  Greeley,  who  had  lent 


From  the  engraving  of  a  pastel  portrait  by  Oscar  Hailing,  after 
a  daguerreotype. 


EDGAR   ALLAN    POE  89 

him  money  to  keep  the  Journal  alive,  with  one  of  his 
characteristic    "  Recollections  "  : 

"  A  gushing  youth  once  wrote  to  me  to  this 
effect : 

" c  DEAR  SIR  :  Among  your  literary  treasures  you 
have  doubtless  preserved  several  autographs  of  our 
country's  late  lamented  poet,  Edgar  A.  Poe.  If  so, 
and  you  can  spare  one,  please  inclose  it  to  me,  and 
receive  the  thanks  of  yours  truly/ 

"  I  promptly  responded  as  follows : 

"  'DEAR  SIR  :  Among  myliterary  treasures  there 
happens  to  be  exactly  one  autograph  of  our  country's 
late  lamented  poet,  Edgar  A.  Poe.  It  is  his  note 
of  hand  for  fifty  dollars,  with  my  indorsement  across 
the  back.  It  cost  me  exactly  $50.75  (including 
protest),  and  you  may  have  it  for  half  that  amount. 
Yours  respectfully/ 

"  That  autograph,  I  regret  to  say,  remains  on  my 
hands,  and  is  still  for  sale  at  first  cost,  despite  the 
lapse  of  time  and  the  depreciation  of  our  currency." 

With  Poe's  abandonment  of  the  Broadway  Journal 
his  work  as  an  editor  ended.  He  was  still  an  im 
portant  contributor  to  the  magazines,  and  his  series 
of  articles  in  Godeys,  "The  Literati  of  New  York," 
in  which  he  belauded  and  berated  his  contempora 
ries  with  equal  vigour,  made  no  little  stir  in  its  time. 


9o  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

Many  of  his  judgments  about  the  most  important 
men  of  his  day,  as,  for  example,  his  immediate  recog 
nition  of  Hawthorne's  genius,  showed  that  the  true 
critical  faculty  was  in  him.  That  he  did  not  always 
exercise  it  sincerely  we  may  infer  from  his  answer  to 
a  protest  against  his  high  praise,  in  print,  of  the 
productions  of  somebody  defined  by  a  reminiscent 
friend  as  a  "  lady  writer  "  :  "  It  is  true/'  he  said,  "  she 
is  really  commonplace ;  but  her  husband  was  kind 
to  me  ;  I  cannot  point  an  arrow  against  any  woman." 
Something  of  the  same  disingenuousness,  to  call  it 
here  by  no  harsher  name,  permitted  him  to  sell 
several  times  over,  often  in  slightly  varied  forms, 
the  works  of  his  pen,  and  to  dedicate  the  same 
verses  to  successive  ladies  as  occasion  arose.  It 
made  the  less  matter,  however,  at  the  time  with 
which  we  are  now  concerned,  for  he  had  written  "  The 
Raven,"  first  printed  in  the  Evening  Mirror,  Jan 
uary  29,  1845,  fr°m  advance  sheets  of  the  February 
number  of  the  American  Whig  Review ;  and  though 
the  commercial  value  of  the  poem  is  said  by  some 
to  have  been  ten,  by  others  five  dollars,  its  effect 
was  to  carry  Poe's  name  into  every  corner  of  the 
land.  He  whose  reputation  had  been  based  almost 
entirely  upon  prose  suddenly  found  himself  known 
high  and  low  as  a  poet. 

Neither  his  fame  nor  the  publication  of  two  vol 
umes  in  1 845,  Tales  and  The  Raven  and  Other  Poems,, 
made  him  less  than  usually  an  object  of  pity.  Most 


EDGAR   ALLAN    POE  91 

of  the  time  he  was  desperately  poor,  and  worse  than 
poverty  was  the  condition  described  in  this  letter  of 
his  own  —  read  it  as  you  will  —  written  in  1 848  : 
"  Six  years  ago,  a  wife,  whom  I  loved  as  no  man 
ever  loved  before,  ruptured  a  blood-vessel  in  sing 
ing.  Her  life  was  despaired  of.  I  took  leave  of 
her  forever,  and  underwent  all  the  agonies  of  her 
death.  She  recovered  partially,  and  I  again  hoped. 
At  the  end  of  a  year  the  vessel  broke  again.  I 
went  through  precisely  the  same  scene.  .  .  .  Then 
again  —  again  —  and  even  once  again,  at  varying 
intervals.  Each  time  I  felt  all  the  agonies  of  her 
death  —  and  at  each  accession  of  the  disorder  I 
loved  her  more  dearly  and  clung  to  her  life  with 
more  desperate  pertinacity.  But  I  am  constitu 
tionally  sensitive  —  nervous  in  a  very  unusual  de 
gree.  I  became  insane,  with  long  intervals  of  horrible 
sanity.  During  these  fits  of  absolute  unconscious 
ness  I  drank,  —  God  only  knows  how  often  or  how 
much.  As  a  matter  of  course,  my  enemies  referred 
the  insanity  to  the  drink,  rather  than  the  drink, 
to  the  insanity." 

In  1846  Poe,  with  Virginia  and  Mrs.  Clemm, 
had  moved  to  Fordham,  near  New  York  City,  and 
established  himself  in  the  well-known  cottage  which 
recently  has  had  to  make  way  for  a  trolley  road. 
His  interrupted  writing  brought  the  scantiest  re 
turns  in  money.  By  the  autumn  of  this  year  it 
was  felt  that  Mrs.  Poe's  last  illness  was  upon  her. 


92  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

A  visitor  has  described  the  scene  in  the  cottage : 
"  There  was  no  clothing  on  the  bed,  which  was 
only  straw,  but  a  snow-white  counterpane  and 
sheets.  The  weather  was  cold,  and  the  sick  lady 
had  the  dreadful  chills  that  accompany  the  hectic 
fever  of  consumption.  She  lay  on  the  straw  bed, 
wrapped  in  her  husband's  great-coat,  with  a  large 
tortoise-shell  cat  in  her  bosom.  The  wonderful  cat 


FOE'S  COTTAGE  AT  FORDHAM,  N.  Y. 

seemed  conscious  of  her  great  usefulness.  The  coat 
and  the  cat  were  the  sufferer's  only  means  of 
warmth,  except  as  her  husband  held  her  hands  and 
her  mother  her  feet." 

Poe  himself  was  only  a  little  less  ill,  with  poverty 
and  dread ;  and  when  Virginia  died,  in  January  of 
1847,  the  good  women  who  cared  for  him  nearly 
despaired  of  his  recovery.  There  were  always  good 
women  to  care  for  Poe.  To  Mrs.  Clemm  Poe 
himself  well  knew  what  he  owed,  as  the  lines  "To 


MRS.    MARIA  CLEMM. 
From  a  Daguerreotype  taken  in  1850. 


EDGAR   ALLAN   POE 


93 


My  Mother  "  continue  to  tell  the  world ;  and  it  is 
well  worth  while  to  repeat  the  pathetic  words  which 
Willis  wrote  of  her  in  the  Home  Journal  after  Poe 
himself  had  died :  "  Winter  after  winter,  for  years, 
the  most  touching  sight  to  us,  in  this  whole  city, 
has  been  that  tireless  minister  to  genius,  thinly  and 
insufficiently  clad,  going  from  office  to  office  with  a 
poem,  or  an  article  on  some  literary  subject,  to  sell, — 
sometimes  simply  pleading  in  a  broken  voice  that  he 
was  ill,  and  begging  for  him  —  mentioning  nothing 
but  that  c  he  was  ill/  whatever  might  be  the  reason 
for  his  writing  nothing,  —  and  never,  amid  all  her 
tears  and  recitals  of  distress,  suffering  one  syllable  to 
escape  her  lips  that  could  convey  a  doubt  of  him, 
or  a  complaint,  or  a  lessening  of  pride  in  his 
genius  and  good  intentions." 

At  this  crisis  of  Virginia's  death  it  was  a  Mrs. 
Shew  who,  after  Mrs.  Clemm,  was  most  to  Poe. 
To  her  we  are  said  to  owe  "  The  Bells."  The  story 
runs  that  in  one  of  Poe's  visits  to  her  house  he 
said  that  he  had  to  write  a  poem,  and  complained 
of  his  total  lack  of  inspiration  for  it.  The  sound 
of  church  bells  prompted  her,  in  spite  of  his  irri 
tation  at  the  noise  they  were  making,  to  write  at 
the  top  of  a  piece  of  paper,  "  The  Bells,  by  E.  A. 
Poe."  Then,  as  a  first  line,  she  jotted  down  "The 
bells,  the  little  silver  bells,"  and  after  Poe  had  done 
one  stanza,  wrote  "  The  heavy  iron  bells  "  for  him 
in  the  same  way ;  having  finished  this  stanza,  he 


94  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

wrote  above  them  both  "  By  Mrs.  M.  L.  Shew," 
and  handed  her  the  manuscript.  This  was  a  pretty 
bit  of  fooling,  but  it  lacked  the  warmth  which  Poe 
wished  always  to  infuse  into  his  friendships  with 
women,  —  a  warmth  which  soon  afterwards  put  an 
end  to  his  intimacy  with  Mrs.  Shew.  Another  of 
his  women  friends  has  left  the  record  of  Poe's  own 
declaration  that  in  his  wife,  gentle,  devoted,  and 
beautiful  as  she  was,  he  missed  "  a  certain  intellectual 
and  spiritual  sympathy,"  —  a  lack  which  he  was 
always  willing  to  let  the  women  who  "  understood" 
him  try  to  supply.  After  Virginia's  death  these 
intimacies  took  a  conspicuous  place  in  the  spectacle 
of  his  wofully  shattered  life. 

Poe  made  no  mystery  of  his  affection  for  sym 
pathetic  women.  Such  lines  as  those  "  To  Annie," 
a  lady  of  Lowell,  and  the  longer  poem,  "  To 
Helen,"  strike  the  personal  note  with  an  unmis 
takable  clearness.  "  Helen  "  was  herself  a  maker  of 
verse, —  Mrs.  Sarah  Helen  Whitman,  of  Providence, 
Rhode  Island,  —  and  before  she  had  actually  met 
with  Poe  wrote  and  printed  verses  to  him.  In 
1 848  he  made  desperate  efforts  to  marry  her,  and  if 
her  head  had  not  remained  as  completely  hers  as 
her  heart  seems  to  have  been  his,  she  would  doubt 
less  have  become  Mrs.  Poe.  Griswold's  story  of 
their  final  interview  was  cruelly  untrue,  although  it 
is  evident  that  Poe's  indulgence  in  his  besetting  sins 
at  the  very  time  and  place  when  he  should  have 


MRS.    SARAH   HELEN   WHITMAN. 

Reproduced,  by  permission,  from  a  portrait  in  the  Athenaeum, 
Providence,  R.  1. 


EDGAR   ALLAN    POE  95 

been  most  himself  put  an  end  to  his  hopes  in  Provi 
dence.  Apparently  he  was  acting  at  the  time  upon 
the  advice  of  Mrs.  Shew  to  save  himself  by  marriage. 
One  is  not  surprised,  therefore,  to  find  him  in  1849 
ardently  wooing  a  wealthy  widow  of  Richmond,  a 
Mrs.  Shelton,  with  whom  as  Miss  Sarah  Elmira  Roy- 
ster  he,  as  a  boy,  had  had  romantic  dealings.  One 
suspects  that  the  romance  was  quite  of  the  past,  and 
the  suspicion  is  borne  out  by  a  portion  of  a  letter 
which  Poe  wrote  from  Richmond  to  Mrs.  Clemm 
at  Fordham,  after  he  had  secured  the  promise  of 
Mrs.  Shelton's  prosperous  hand : 

"  And  now,  dear  Muddy,  there  is  one  thing  I 
wish  you  to  pay  particular  attention  to.  I  told 
Elmira  when  I  first  came  here,  that  I  had  one  of 
the  pencil-sketches  of  her,  that  I  took  a  long  while 
ago  in  Richmond  ;  and  I  told  her  that  I  would  write 
to  you  about  it.  So  when  you  write  just  copy  the 
following  words  in  your  letter  :  c  I  have  looked 
again  for  the  pencil-sketch  of  Mrs.  S.,  but  cannot 
find  it  anywhere.  I  took  down  all  the  books  and 
shook  them  one  by  one,  and,  unless  Eliza  White 
has  it,  I  do  not  [know]  what  has  become  of  it. 
She  was  looking  at  it  the  last  time  I  saw  it.  The 
one  you  spoilt  with  Indian  Ink  ought  to  be  some 
where  about  the  house.  I  will  do  my  best  to 
find  it/" 

We  could  gladly  dispense  with  the  discovery  of 
such  letters  as  this  one,  written  in  the  last  month  of 
Poe's  life.  It  is  needless  to  comment  upon  it  or 


96  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

the  state  of  unhealth  which  it  reveals.     It  is  for  the 
psychologist  to  confer  with  the  physiologist  and  to 
divide  the  blame  for  Poe's  condition  between  his 
spirit  and  his  body.     He  himself  once  wrote  to  a 
friend:  "  You  will  find  yourself  puzzled  in  judging 
me  by  ordinary  motives."     And  if  he  had  been  any 
one  else,  a  fortunate  ending  to  the  Richmond  visit 
could  almost  surely  have  been  predicted.     He  was 
lionised  by  old  and  new  friends.     The  two  lectures 
which   he    gave   were   greatly   successful.     He  was 
full  of  hope  for  the  success  of  his  long-desired  mag 
azine,   crhe  Stylus.     Yet  twice  during  the   visit  he 
yielded  to   his  passion  for  liquor,  and  the   doctors 
told  him  that  if  he  did  so  but  once  again  it  would 
kill  him.     With  this  knowledge  he  started  for  the 
North  to  arrange  some  business  matters  preliminary 
to  his  marriage.     It  is  difficult  to  trace  his  footsteps 
with  certainty  from  the  time  he  left  Richmond,  ap 
parently    on    Sunday   night,   September    30,    1849, 
until  Wednesday   afternoon,  when    he    was    found 
helpless  in   a   Baltimore   polling  booth,  which  was 
also  a  rumshop.     As  the  day  is  said  to  have  been 
that  of  election,  the  supposition  is  that  he  had  been 
seized  by  politicians  and  made  to  vote  at  many  polls. 
When  his   friends  found  him,  he  was  taken  to  the 
Washington   Hospital,  where,   after  four    days    of 
delirium,  he   died  on  Sunday,  October  yth,  saying, 
"  Lord,  help  my  poor  soul."     The  doctor  who  at 
tended  him  has  within  recent  years  published  his 
opinion  that  Poe  was  drugged  and  not  intoxicated 


POE  IN  THE  LAST  YEAR   OF  HIS  LIFE. 
From  a  Daguerreotype  taken  in  Lowell,  Mass. 


EDGAR   ALLAN   POE  97 

when  he  was  brought  to  the  hospital ;  and  so  with 
contradictions,  as  at  the  beginning,  his  life  ended. 

Except  that  he  was  an  erect,  military-looking 
person,  not  tall,  but  well  formed,  with  clear,  respon 
sive  eyes,  and  of  a  melancholy  countenance,  hardly 
anything  can  be  said  of  Poe  which  somebody  will 
not  stand  ready  to  contradict.  The  effect  even  of 
his  personal  appearance  upon  men  and  upon  women 
was  totally  different,  and  to  women  we  are  indebted 
for  the  descriptions  which  endow  his  presence  with 
the  strongest  charm. 

As  of  the  man,  so  of  his  work  ;  the  differences  of 
the  opinion  it  has  excited  are  as  wide  as  the  world. 
To  Emerson  he  was  merely  the  "jingle-man,"  and 
Emerson's  was  not  an  isolated  belief.  For  many  of 
our  friends  in  France  and  our  English  kinsmen,  as 
for  some  of  us  at  home,  he  stands  with  the  supreme 
few  in  American  letters.  It  has  been  possible  here 
to  glance  merely  at  some  of  the  conspicuous  events 
of  his  ill-controlled  life.  An  infinite  deal,  perhaps 
of  equal  interest,  has  been  omitted.  Many  pages 
would  be  needed  to  discuss  to  any  purpose  his 
familiar  definition  of  poetry  as  the  "  rhythmical 
creation  of  beauty,"  his  insistence,  in  and  out  of 
season,  that  long  poems  do  not  exist,  and  the  large 
significance  of  his  work  in  criticism,  fiction,  and 
poetry.  Happily  there  is  no  dearth  of  sugges 
tive  comment  upon  all  these  themes.  Nearly  all 
we  know  and  all  we  need  to  know  about  them  is 

7 


98  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

gathered  into  the  biography  by  Mr.  Woodberry, 
and  the  complete  edition  of  Poe  which  he  and  Mr. 
E.  C.  Stedman  have  recently  prepared. 

When  one  has  read  all  there  is  to  be  said  about 
the  man  and  his  work,  and  has  done  a  little  think 
ing  for  one's  self,  a  few  considerations  make  them 
selves  reasonably  clear.  In  the  first  place,  one 
abandons  the  foolish  thought  of  "  what  might  have 
been."  In  his  life  of  the  spirit  Poe  was  a  dweller  in 
misty  borderlands  ;  in  the  flesh  he  was  a  highly  de 
veloped  Bohemian  in  the  midst  of  respectability. 
If  he  had  been  something  else,  in  either  regard,  he 
simply  would  not  have1  been  Poe,  and  the  different 
works  of  a  different  man  would  have  been  his  con 
tribution  to  literature.  He  must  be  taken  as  he 
was,  and  so  taken,  with  all  his  imperfections  on  his 
head,  he  is  yet  of  those  who  make  us  feel  the  rigour 
of  the  line  that  is  drawn  between  talent  and  genius. 
We  feel  a  reasonable  confidence  in  placing  him  on 
the  higher  side  of  the  line,  and  our  confidence  goes 
little  further.  It  carries  us  far  enough  in  one  direc 
tion,  however,  to  make  us  disagree  with  a  dictum  of 
Poe's  ambitious  philosophical  work,  Eureka,  that 
as  man  cannot  conceive  of  a  being  superior  to  him 
self,  man  is  therefore  God.  We  are  glad  of  the 
disagreement,  for  since  judgment  is  an  attribute  of 
deity,  and  since  we  are  merely  human,  the  necessity 
for  rendering  final  verdicts  upon  such  fellow-beings 
as  Edgar  Allan  Poe  is  happily  removed. 


WILLIS,   HALLECK,   AND    DRAKE 

IN  the  Letters  from  Under  a  Bridge,  by  N.  P. 
Willis,  which  is  to-day,  perhaps,  the  most  read 
able  of  his  many  volumes,  these  suggestive  words 
may  be  found  :  "  In  what  is  the  judgment  of  poster 
ity  better  than  that  of  contemporaries  ?  Simply  in 
that  the  author  is  seen  from  a  distance,  —  his  per 
sonal  qualities  lost  to  the  eye  and  his  literary  stature 
seen  in  proper  relief  and  proportion."  Having 
thus  delivered  himself,  Willis  proceeds  to  assert,  on 
the  very  next  page,  "  Rufus  Dawes  is  a  poet  if  God 
ever  created  one."  It  is  as  if  an  evil  genius  of  con 
sistency  had  guided  Willis's  pen  into  writing  the  very 
words  which  should  best  prove  the  worthlessness  of 
contemporary  opinion,  for  Rufus  Dawes  lives  to-day 
— if  it  can  be  called  living  —  only  in  dusty  antholo 
gies  and  in  the  pages  which  Poe  devoted  to  an  un 
merciful  exposure  of  his  shortcomings.  For  our 
own  generation  it  cannot  be  said  that  Willis  himself 
has  any  vital  importance,  yet  he  cut  a  prodigious  fig 
ure  in  his  own  time ;  and  while  he  was  extolling  the 
beauties  of  Dawes,  Poe  would  probably  have  been 
only  too  glad  to  take  the  humble  place  which  a  few 


ioo  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

years  later  he  filled  for  a  time  as  Willis's  office  assist 
ant.  Now  that  Willis's  fleet  of  books  is  fastened  al 
most  as  securely  to  cc  Lethe  wharf"  as  the  works 
of  Dawes  himself,  it  is  not  without  suggestion  to  recall 
and  contrast  the  esteem  in  which  he  and  Poe  were 
respectively  held  by  the  reading  public  of  their  time. 
Poe's  literary  stature  had  not  begun  to  be  seen  in 
proper  relief  and  proportion.  Willis's  was  of  the 
sort  which,  from  its  very  adaptation  to  the  taste  of 
the  day,  had  all  its  greatness  then,  and  now  has 
dwindled  almost  out  of  being.  It  will  not  be  pos 
sible  to  note  all  the  contrasts  between  his  career  and 
Poe's,  but  they  can  hardly  fail  to  present  themselves 
to  minds  familiar  with  the  more  tragic  story  of  the 
writer  whose  fame  has  not  died. 

Nathaniel  Parker  Willis  came  of  a  family  that 
had  printer's  ink  in  its  veins.  His  grandfather, 
whose  ancestors  were  among  the  earliest  English 
emigrants  to  Massachusetts,  conducted  a  patriotic 
journal  in  Boston  during  the  Revolution,  and  after 
ward  established  newspapers  in  Virginia  and  Ohio. 
His  son  Nathaniel,  who  is  still  recalled  in  Boston 
as  "  Deacon  Willis "  of  the  Park  Street  Church, 
founded  the  Boston  Recorder,  which  he  declared  to 
be  the  first  religious  newspaper  in  the  world,  and 
the  Youth's  Companion^  which,  beginning  as  a  dis 
tinctly  religious  journal  for  children,  was  probably 
also  the  pioneer  in  its  field.  Deacon  Willis's  wife 
was  Hannah  Parker,  and  to  the  piety  which  she 


WILLIS  AT   31. 
From  an  engraving  of  the  portrait  by  Lawrence. 


WILLIS,    HALLECK,    AND    DRAKE   101 

shared  with  her  husband  her  brighter  spirit  added 
the  quality  of  gaiety  which  their  son,  Nathaniel 
Parker,  the  second  of  nine  children,  could  not  pos 
sibly  have  inherited  from  his  rigorous  father.  This 
boy,  the  Willis  with  whom  we  are  now  concerned, 
was  born  in  Portland,  Maine,  on  January  20,  1806, 
about  a  year  before  Longfellow's  birth  in  the  same 
town. 

From  the  strict  orthodoxy  of  his  father's  house 
hold  it  was  natural  that  the  son  should  be  sent  first 
to  the  school  at  Andover  and  then  to  Yale  College. 
At  Andover  he  took  an  active  part  in  a  religious  re 
vival,  of  which  it  would  be  hard  to  find  the  parallel  in 
a  modern  boarding-school.  "  Prayer  ascends  contin 
ually,"  wrote  Willis  at  seventeen  to  his  father, 
"  sinners  are  repenting,  and  I  am  as  proud  as  Luci 
fer.  .  .  .  Oh,  pray  that  I  may  have  humility  !  It 
is  and  must  be  the  burden  of  my  supplications." 
As  to  the  influence  of  Yale  at  the  time  Willis  was 
in  college,  he  subsequently  wrote  that  the  student 
was  "  committed  to  the  sincere  zealots  of  Connecti 
cut  ...  to  learn  Latin  and  Greek,  if  it  pleased 
Heaven,  but  the  mysteries  of  c  election  and  free 
grace/  whether  or  no."  Before  Willis  had  been 
long  under  this  system  of  instruction  he  found  that 
there  were  many  other  things  to  learn.  The  name 
he  won  for  himself  while  still  a  collegian,  by  writing 
a  few  of  his  most  popular  scriptural  poems  and 
other  verses  of  an  interest  more  strictly  local,  ren- 


102  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

dered  him  something  of  a  lion  in  undergraduate 
society,  and  his  good  looks  and  attractive  manners 
made  it  easily  possible  for  him  to  play  his  leonine 
part  with  success  and  satisfaction.  Accordingly, 
without  developing  any  tendencies  that  could  be 
called  dangerous,  he  soon  found  himself  leading 
a  life  of  social  pleasure  which  placed  him  in  his 
father's  eyes  among  "  the  world's  people,"  and 
made  Willis  himself  conscious  of  what  he  called 
an  cc  enduring  conviction  of  sin."  Yet  the  convic 
tion  was  not  overpowering,  and  indeed  could 
hardly  have  been  "enduring,"  for  the  Willis  of 
these  college  days,  concerned  with  the  less  serious 
side  of  life,  pleased  with  the  bright  colour  of  things, 
and  never  probing  too  deeply  into  strenuous  real 
ities,  was  the  Willis  of  the  later  years. 

For  four  years  after  leaving  college  —  that  is, 
from  1827  to  1831  —  he  was  an  inmate  of  his 
father's  house  in  Boston.  Here  he  served  the 
editorial  apprenticeship  which  prepared  him  for 
most  of  his  work  in  the  world.  He  edited  the 
annuals  The  Legendary  and  "The  Token  for  S.  G. 
Goodrich,  "  Peter  Parley,"  and  attempted  a  maga 
zine,  the  American  Monthly,  on  his  own  account. 
Already  he  showed  himself  essentially  a  journalist. 
Annual,  monthly,  and  daily  periodicals  were  his  in 
evitable  mediums  of  expression,  and  to  know  the 
nature  of  the  periodical  literature  of  his  time  it  is 
only  necessary  to  know  Willis,  and  vice-versa.  It 


WILLIS,    HALLECK,   AND   DRAKE    103 

was  the  period  of  steel  engraving  in  illustrative  art ; 
and  the  greater  portion  of  Willis's  work,  then  and 
later,  seems  now  to  bear  about  the  same  relation 
to  life  as  these  pictures  of  skies  in  which  thun 
der-storms  were  always  gathering,  and  of  persons 
through  whose  faces  the  blandness  or  malignity  of 
undoubted  saints  or  villains  was  sure  to  shine. 

No  poems  that  Willis  ever  wrote  attained  a 
greater  popularity  than  those  upon  scriptural  themes. 
The  generation  which  first  read  them  knew  not  even 
what  the  word  realism  meant;  yet  remembering 
how  well  they  knew  their  Bibles,  it  is  somewhat  hard 
to  understand  now  why  they  did  not  ask  even  for 
truth.  The  vastly  popular  poem -of  "  Absalom  "  is 
a  fair  specimen  of  Willis's  best  scriptural  verse,  which 
Lowell  designated  as  "  inspiration  and  water."  It  will 
repay  the  reader  who  cares  to  know  how  Willis  did 
such  things  to  compare  his  poem  with  the  Bible 
story,  and  to  observe  how  his  David  pours  forth 
a  poetical  lamentation  in  five  stanzas  over  the  pall 
and  bier  of  Absalom,  who  in  the  simpler  narrative  is 
left  beneath  a  heap  of  stones  in  a  wood,  nobody 
knows  how  far  from  the  spot  where  David  uttered 
his  infinitely  tragic  cry,  "  O  my  son  Absalom,  my 
son,  my  son  Absalom  !  would  God  I  had  died  for 
thee,  O  Absalom,  my  son,  my  son  !  "  Yet  Willis 
in  his  own  day  would  have  suffered  little  from  any 
application  of  the  parallel  column  principle.  Evi 
dently  his  readers  had  standards  of  their  own,  which, 


io4  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

for  better  or  worse,  we  have  not  preserved.  A 
living  critic  has  summed  the  matter  up  by  saying, 
"  He  sauntered  about  the  sacred  places  in  a  domino, 
which  was  mistaken  for  the  prophetic  mantle."  The 
saunterer  and  those  who  mistook  him  are  thus 
placed  where  they  belong,  side  by  side. 

While  Willis  was  establishing  himself  as  a  re 
ligious  poet,  he  was  also  producing  a  goodly  quan 
tity  of  secular  prose,  ephemeral  pictures  of  life, 
especially  in  its  lighter  aspects.  Indeed,  his  rela 
tions  with  the  world  became  less  than  ever  those 
which  his  early  training  should  have  produced.  He 
figured  to  some  extent  in  the  more  fashionable 
society  of  Boston,  gave  great  care  to  his  dress  and 
personal  appearance,  and  drove  a  high-stepping  bay 
horse  which  he  named  Thalaba.  For  frequenting 
the  theatre  and  neglecting  his  duties  in  Park  Street 
he  was  excommunicated  from  the  church.  George 
Ticknor  Curtis  has  left  a  picturesque  and  suggestive 
reminiscence  of  the  man  as  he  was.  Curtis  as  a  boy 
was  present  at  a  Harvard  commencement,  and  stood 
watching  the  arrival  of  the  carriages  that  brought 
the  governor  and  other  dignitaries  to  Cambridge. 
"  The  last  vehicle  in  the  procession,"  he  says,  "  and 
as  'if  a  part  of  it,  contained  Willis,  seated  alone  in 
his  gig,  dressed  in  a  green  frock-coat,  white  waist 
coat,  buff-coloured  nankeen  trousers,  all  supremely 
fine  ;  his  broad-brimmed  Leghorn  hat  lay  on  the 
seat  by  his  side.  With  an  air  of  supreme  noncha- 


WILLIS,    HALLECK,   AND    DRAKE    105 

lance  he  tossed  his  reins  to  a  hostler  who  stood  there 
waiting  for  such  chances,  put  a  quarter  into  the 
man's  hand,  and  told  him  to  take  Thalaba  to  a 
certain  livery-stable.  He  then  passed  up  the  broad 
aisle  in  the  wake  of  the  procession,  and  if  he  did 
not  ascend  the  stage  and  seat  himself  among  the 
dignitaries,  it  must  have  been  because  there  was  no 


room." 


Neither  Willis  nor  his  undertakings  were  very 
successful  in  Boston.  His  magazine  was  a  failure, 
and  the  guardian  of  a  young  lady  to  whom  he  was 
engaged  forbade  his  marriage  with  her.  At  a  later 
day  he  wrote  of  his  fellow-townsmen  :  "  They  have 
denied  me  patronage,  abused  me,  misrepresented 
me,  refused  me  both  character  and  genius,  and  I 
feel  that  I  owe  them  nothing.  .  .  .  The  mines  of 
Golconda  would  not  tempt  me  to  return  and  live  in 
Boston."  Nor  was  this  merely  a  short-lived  feeling, 
for  still  later  he  wrote,  in  the  course  of  a  cordial 
letter  to  Longfellow,  "  I  confess  I  see  everything, 
even  my  friends,  through  my  bilious  spectacles  in 
Boston.  I  do  not  enjoy  anything  or  anybody  within 
its  abominable  periphery  of  hills  and  salt  marshes." 

It  was  with  little  regret,  therefore,  that  in  1831 
he  joined  his  fortunes  with  those  of  the  New  York 
Mirror,  into  which  his  American  Monthly  was 
merged  at  the  same  time  The  Mirror  had  been 
established  by  Samuel  Woodworth,  the  author  of 
"  The  Old  Oaken  Bucket,"  and  its  chief  editor  at 


io6  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

the  time  of  Willis's  accession  was  George  P.  Mor 
ris,  who  wrote  "Woodman,  Spare  that  Tree."  It 
was  a  weekly  literary  journal,  and  from  the  work 
of  its  editors  it  may  be  imagined  that  its  aim  was 
carefully  directed  to  the  mark  of  popular  taste.  It 
was  soon  decided  that  a  weekly  letter  from  Willis 
in  Europe  would  ensure  the  certainty  of  this  aim, 
and  with  difficulty  the  sum  of  #500  was  raised  to 
start  him  on  his  travels.  With  this  sum  in  his 
pocket,  and  the  promise  of  ten  dollars  for  each 
letter  he  should  write,  he  set  sail  from  Philadelphia, 
in  the  autumn  of  1831,  on  a  brig  bound  for  Havre. 
He  was  not  yet  twenty-six  years  old,  and  all  the 
world  lay  before  him.  He  had  seen  much  of  it 
before  his  return  nearly  five  years  later. 

Like  most  young  tourists,  Willis  began  his  letter- 
writing  on  board  ship.  From  Paris,  where  the 
American  Minister  paid  him  the  useful  compliment 
of  attaching  him  to  the  legation,  from  Italy,  from 
the  Mediterranean  and  the  Levant,  from  Switzer 
land  and  England,  he  continued  to  write  his  "  Pen- 
cillings  by  the  Way "  until  they  had  reached  the 
number  of  one  hundred  and  thirty-nine,  and  his  time 
for  returning  home  was  near.  In  America,  where 
"  First  Impressions  of  Europe,"  as  the  sub-title 
described  his  "  Pencillings,"  were  far  less  common 
then  than  now,  the  letters  were  read  with  eagerness. 
General  Morris  declared  that  they  were  copied  into 
five  hundred  newspapers.  It  has  been  well  said 


From  an  engraving  of  the  portrait  by  Inman,  1831. 


WILLIS,    HALLECK,    AND    DRAKE     107 

that  Willis  was  the  progenitor  of  the  Special  Cor 
respondents  of  our  time,  and,  when  the  letters  had 
a  personal  flavour,  of  the  modern  interviewer.  The 
qualities  which  gave  him  success  in  these  depart 
ments  of  journalism  were  in  a  large  measure  the 
qualities  of  his  prose  in  general,  for  he  was  always 
more  a  journalist  than  a  man  of  letters,  as  the  dis 
tinction  is  commonly  understood.  But  his  prose 
belonged  to  a  far  more  florid  journalism  than  that 
which  is  most  approved  to-day.  He  had  a  femi 
nine  eye  for  the  millinery  of  nature  and  life.  He 
declared  frankly,  "  The  ornamental  is  my  vocation," 
and  a  clever  old  lady  is  quoted  by  Willis's  admi 
rable  biographer,  Professor  Henry  A.  Beers,  as  hav 
ing  once  said,  "  Nat  Willis  ought  to  go  about  in 
spring  in  sky-blue  breeches  with  a  rose-coloured 
bellows  to  blow  the  buds  open."  When  he  gave 
the  freest  rein  to  his  fancy  and  his  affectations,  the 
result  was  something  which  to-day  seems  little  less 
than  silly  and  tiresome  ;  but  taken  at  his  best,  in 
descriptions  and  playfully  imaginative  sketches  of 
life,  he  is  still  a  winning  writer  whose  vogue  in  his 
own  time  stands  clearly  explained. 

The  more  personal  details  of  Willis's  experience 
in  Europe  have  an  amusing  aspect  which  James 
Parton  has  presented  in  these  words,  well  worthy  of 
quotation  :  "  At  this  day  it  has  something  of  the 
interest  of  a  histrionic  performance,  which  is  highly 
comic  to  one  who  has  been  behind  the  scenes. 


io8  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

Here  was  a  young  American,  rubbing  along  through 
Europe  on  the  slenderest  resources,  eking  out  his 
weekly  revenue  by  an  occasional  poem  or  story,  but 
always  in  mortal  fear  of  coming  to  the  bottom  of 
his  purse,  and  all  the  time  he  wrote  in  the  tone  and 
style  of  a  young  prince,  conveying  the  impression 
that  castles  and  palaces,  chariots  and  horses,  and 
all  the  splendours  of  aristocratic  life,  were  just  as 
familiar  to  him  as  the  air  he  breathed." 

In  England  especially,  where  he  came  armed  with 
excellent  letters  of  introduction,  he  was  observed  to 
be  "  on  exceedingly  good  terms  with  himself  and 
with  the  elite  of  the  best  society."  Lady  Blessing- 
ton  and  other  persons  of  less  notoriety  and  perhaps 
a  securer  position  took  him  up  and  made  much  of 
him.  To  women  particularly,  and  often  to  older 
women,  he  was  here,  as  elsewhere,  very  attractive. 
He  was  given  the  entree  of  the  best  clubs,  and 
found  it  as  easy  as  it  had  been  in  New  Haven  to 
make  himself  agreeable  to  everybody.  No,  not 
everybody,  for  when  his  <c  Pencillings "  were  re 
printed  in  England  there  were  those  who  took  him 
roundly  to  task  for  some  of  the  things  he  had  said. 
Lockhart  attacked  him  in  the  Quarterly r,  and  he  was 
even  called  out  by  the  truculent  Captain  Marryat, 
who  could  not  bear  to  read  that  his  "gross  trash 
sells  immensely  about  Wapping  and  Portsmouth, 
and  brings  him  five  or  six  hundred  the  book,  but 
that  can  scarce  be  called  literature."  The  "  hostile 


From  an  engraving  in  the  Bradford  Club's  limited  edition  of  the 
"  Croaker  Papers,11   1860. 


WILLIS,    HALLECK,   AND    DRAKE     109 

meeting "  actually  took  place,  but  the  seconds  did 
their  part  so  well  on  the  very  field  of  conflict  that 
bloodshed  was  avoided.  Willis  made  many  warm 
friends,  however,  in  England,  and  when  he  sailed 
for  home  in  May  of  1836  he  was  accompanied  by  a 
young  English  wife,  the  daughter  ^of  General  Stace 
of  the  British  army. 

By  this  time  Willis  had  shown  very  clearly  what 
he  could  do  in  prose  and  verse,  and  the  remainder 
of  his  life  was  devoted,  with  greater  and  less  success, 
to  doing  it.  His  outward  circumstances  had  the 
variations  which  are  the  common  lot  of  man.  At  the 
country  place  of  Glenmary,  at  Owego,  New  York, 
where  he  lived  for  several  years  after  his  return 
from  England,  he  seems,  if  one  may  judge  from  the 
very  agreeable  Letters  from  Under  a  Bridge,  to  have 
been  as  near  to  happiness  as  he  ever  came.  But 
bereavements  and  losses  befell  him.  After  a  second 
journey  to  England  he  had  to  give  up  Glenmary, 
and  not  long  afterward  his  wife  died.  There  was 
then  a  third  visit  to  England,  and  a  search  on  the 
Continent  for  escaped  health.  In  1846  his  second 
marriage  took  place,  to  Miss  Cornelia  Grinnell  of 
New  Bedford.  Many  years  before,  the  sculptor 
Greenough  had  carved  a  statue  of  her  as  a  little  girl 
in  Florence,  and,  curiously  enough,  had  wrought 
from  a  remnant  of  the  same  stone  a  bust  of  Willis. 
It  was  in  1846  also  that  the  Home  Journal  was  born, 
the  last  and  most  prosperous  descendant  of  the 


no  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

Mirror >  which,  under  Willis  and  his  constant  friend 
Morris,  had  passed  through  various  stages  of  evolu 
tion.  As  editor  and  contributor  in  New  York,  and 
at  his  second  country-place,  Idlewild,  on  the  Hud 
son,  Willis  toiled  faithfully  for  this  periodical 
through  the  twenty-one  years  of  life  that  remained 
to  him.  They  were  years  from  which  trouble  was 
not  absent.  One  of  the  forms  it  took  was  the 
publication  in  1854  of  the  story  Ruth  Hall,  by 
Willis's  sister,  "  Fanny  Fern,"  who  chose  the 
method  of  caricature  in  the  guise  of  fiction  for 
exploiting  a  family  quarrel  due  to  Willis's  refusal 
to  accept  certain  contributions  she  wished  to  make 
to  the  Home  Journal.  Another  distress  was  the 
part  he  had  to  take  in  the  famous  Edwin  Forrest 
divorce  suit.  The  actor  seems  to  have  sought  trag 
edy  in  daily  life,  and,  in  playing  the  role  of  Othello, 
knocked  Willis  down  in  the  street  one  day,  and 
involved  him  unpleasantly  in  the  suit  against  Mrs. 
Forrest  which  resulted  disastrously  for  the  jealous 
husband's  private  reputation  and  triumphantly  for 
hers.  When  the  war  came,  Willis,  of  all  men,  under 
took  to  be  the  Home  Journal's  correspondent  in 
Washington.  "  He  dropped  his  light  plummet  of 
observation,"  as  Professor  Beers  well  says,  "  into  the 
boiling  sea  of  the  civil  war,  where  it  was  tossed  about 
at  no  great  depth  below  the  surface."  His  health 
was  already  much  enfeebled,  yet  the  falling  off  of  the 
Journal's  Southern  subscribers  and  the  death  of 


x^fe,^-^4 


_ 


sf 

*~r 


x^t 


FAC-SIMILE  OF  PART  OF  A  LETTER  FROM  WILLIS  TO  POE. 


ii2  AMERICAN,  BOOKMEN 

General  Morris  made  it  seem  imperative  that  he 
should  give  all  the  energies  of  a  younger,  stronger 
man  to  his  work.  These  failing  days  and  years  of 
men  whose  pen  is  their  support,  days  so  often 
clouded  by  the  fear  of  want  and  the  necessity  of 
work:  of  which  they  are  really  incapable,  provide  the 
saddest  pages  of  literary  biography.  The  spectacle 
of  Willis,  whom  Lowell  had  truly  called"  the  topmost 
bright  bubble  on  the  wave  of  the  town,"  righting  at 
the  end  against  the  heavy  odds  of  need  and  illness  is 
one  upon  which  it  is  unnecessary  to  dwell.  His 
disease  was  found  to  be  epilepsy,  and  finally  took 
the  form  of  paralysis  and  softening  of  the  brain. 
The  end  came  at  Idlewild  on  January  20,  1867. 

An  essential  element  of  dandyism  in  Willis  and 
almost  everything  he  did  was  probably  the  cause 
of  what  might  be  called  his  personal  unpopularity  in 
print.  His  biographer  declares  that  it  was  second 
only  to  the  unpopularity  of  Cooper  among  Ameri 
can  writers ;  and  it  is  the  less  easily  understood 
because  Willis's  heart  was  really  of  the  kindest  and 
most  human.  Furthermore,  he  was  not  only  prompt 
with  words  of  praise  for  promising  beginners,  but 
seems  to  have  been  almost  without  literary  jealous 
ies.  The  truth  must  be  that  our  countrymen  were 
less  tolerant  fifty  years  ago  than  they  are  to-day 
of  anything  that  even  seemed  frivolous  or  flippant. 
Willis  evidently  did  not  take  himself  too  seriously, 
and  if  one  should  seek  high  and  low  for,  terms  to 


WILLIS,    HALLECK,   AND    DRAKE    113 

define  his  work,  no  words  more  suggestive  of  its 
true  character  could  be  found  than  those  which  he 
chose  as  titles  for  some  of  his  own  books.  Besides 
the  Pencillings  by  the  Way,  there  are  Inklings  of  Adven 
ture,  Loiterings  of  Travel,  Hurrygraphs,  and  Dashes 
at  Life  with  a  Free  Pencil.  Indeed,  he  was  inces 
santly  dashing  at  life  with  a  free  pencil,  and  just 
because  this  was  what  he  did  there  is  little  to  show 
for  it  fifty  years  after  the  best  of  it  was  done.  With 
his  prose,  most  of  his  verse,  even  the  once  univer 
sally  known  "  Love  in  a  Cottage,"  has  ceased  to  be 
read.  In  a  few  such  poems  as  "  Unseen  Spirits  " 
and  the  "  Lines  on  Leaving  Europe,"  the  best  of 
Willis  is  to  be  found  to-day. 

In  one  of  his  "  Letters  from  Idlewild  "  Willis 
wrote  these  characteristic  words  :  "  With  such  advan 
tages  of  physiognomy  and  manners,  so  winning  a 
look  and  voice,  how  is  it  that  Fitz-Greene  Halleck 
has  never  let  himself  be  known  to  audiences  ?  .  .  . 
What  a  pity  that  so  admirably  formed  a  creature 
should  die  (as  he  is  likely  to  !)  without  the  eye  and 
ear  homage  for  which  Nature  gifted  him  !  "  Willis 
could  no  more  have  understood  Halleck's  objections 
to  publicity  than  his  venturing  to  stake  his  fame 
upon  a  very  few  poems,  —  a  venture  in  which  Drake, 
through  his  early  death,  stood  by  Halleck's  side. 
The  contrast  between  Willis  and  Poe,  in  the  nature 
of  the  men  and  of  their  work,  is  sufficiently  striking  ; 
yet  Willis  in  many  ways  is  separated  as  distinctly 


n4  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

from  the  two  men  whose  names  are  always  linked 
together  in  American  literary  annals,  Fitz-Greene 
Halleck  and  Joseph  Rodman  Drake.  Willis  does 
not  seem  to  have  felt  that  it  was  better  to  live  by 
one  poem  than  to  die  with  many  books  ;  at  least  he 
did  not  proceed  upon  such  a  theory,  and  to-day 
there  is  not  one  thing  he  wrote  which  is  even  as 
well  known  as  his  name.  On  the  other  hand, 
"  Marco  Bozzaris "  is  familiar  to  thousands  who 
know  little  or  nothing  about  Halleck,  and  "  The 
Culprit  Fay  "  and  "  The  American  Flag  "  ("  When 
Freedom  from  her  mountain  height  ")  are  eminently 
living  specimens  of  our  national  poetry. 

Halleck  outlived  Willis  by  about  ten  months, 
though  born  sixteen  years  before  him,  on  July  8, 
1790,  in  Guilford,  Connecticut.  Drake  was  Hal- 
leek's  junior  by  five  years,  August  7,  1795,  being 
the  time  of  his  birth,  and  New  York  City  the 
place.  Like  Willis,  they  were  both  of  old  New  Eng 
land  stock.  To  New  York  came  Halleck  in  1811. 
He  had  received  all  his  schooling  in  Guilford,  and 
because  "  he  could  n't  help  it,"  as  one  of  his  school 
mates  said,  had  written  more  than  the  usual  number 
of  boyish  verses,  which  his  biographer,  General 
James  Grant  Wilson,  has  done  him  the  doubtful 
kindness  to  exhume.  In  New  York  he  entered  a 
mercantile  office  —  having  served  his  apprenticeship 
of  trade  in  the  village  store  of  Guilford  —  and  had 
not  long  been  living  his  new  life  when  he  made  the 


WILLIS,    HALLECK,   AND   DRAKE    115 

acquaintance  of  young  Drake,  then  a  student  of 
medicine.  The  story  is  told  that  one  afternoon, 
in  the  spring  of  1813,  the  two  friends,  not  yet 
intimate,  were  sailing  in  New  York  Bay  and  discuss- 


M 


«x  /  v^.      / 


FAC-SIMILE  STANZA  AND  SIGNATURE  FROM  DRAKE'S  POEM, 
"ABELARD  TO  ELOISE." 

ing  the  delights  of  a  future  world.  "  It  would  be 
heaven,"  said  Halleck,  in  the  exuberance  of  youth, 
"  to  lounge  upon  the  rainbow  and  read  Tom  Camp 
bell."  The  thought,  according  to  the  anecdote, 
appealed  so  strongly  to  Drake's  young  sympathies 
that  their  devoted  intimacy  began  upon  the  spot. 


n6  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

About  three  years  after  this  occurrence,  Drake 
produced  his  masterpiece,  "  The  Culprit  Fay."  Its 
origin  was  not  unlike  that  of  Precaution  and  'The  Pilot  y 
which  Cooper  produced,  as  we  have  seen,  to  surpass 
respectively  an  English  novel  writer  in  interest  and 
Scott  in  truth  to  sea  life.  Drake,  in  a  similar  spirit, 
refused  one  day  to  admit  the  contention  of  Cooper 
and  Halleck  that  our  American  rivers  would  not 
lend  themselves,  like  the  Scottish  streams,  to  poetic 
treatment.  To  prove  the  truth  of  his  position,  and 
to  give  the  Hudson  its  due,  he  wrote  "  The  Culprit 
Fay  "  in  the  space  of  three  days  in  the  summer  of 
1816.  Dr.  Johnson's  Rasselas  is  hardly  more  re 
markable  for  the  rapidity  of  its  creation ;  and  as 
the  work  of  a  boy  of  twenty-one,  Drake's  poem  is 
worthy  to  be  remembered  with  the  best  fruits  of 
early  ripened  powers. 

Halleck  could  not  look  with  any  satisfaction 
upon  Drake's  marriage,  in  1816,  to  the  daughter  of 
a  rich  shipbuilder.  He  thought  Drake  "the  hand 
somest  man  in  New  York  —  a  face  like  an  ange!3 
a  form  like  an  Apollo,"  and  "  well  knew  that  his 
person  was  the  true  index  of  his  mind."  Though 
Halleck  acted  as  a  groomsman  at  the  wedding,  he 
evidently  feared  the  alliance  of  genius  with  wealth. 
Yet  his  intimacy  with  Drake  suffered  as  little  abate 
ment  as  possible  when  matrimony  steps  between 
bachelor  friends.  From  Europe,  travelling  with 
his  wife,  Dr.  Drake,  as  he  was  then  called,  wrote 


HALLECK  AT   57. 
From  an  engraving  of  a  portrait  by  C.  L.  Elliott. 


WILLIS,    HALLECK,    AND    DRAKE     117 

clever  epistles  in  rhyme  to  his  friend  at  home,  and 
soon  after  his  return  they  began  to  contribute  to  the 
Post  the  verses,  printed  over  the  names  of  Croaker, 
Croaker  Junior,  and  Croaker  &  Co.,  which  provided 
all  New  York  with  keen  amusement. 

These  Croaker  verses  were  undoubtedly  witty 
and  penetrating  skits  on  the  social  and  political  life 
of  the  town,  and  probably  give  as  clear  an  idea  of 
the  year  1819  in  New  York  as  anything  to  which 
one  can  turn.  Yet  the  importance  with  which  they 
were  then  invested  seems  somewhat  curious  now 
that  they  are  quite  forgotten.  Halleck's  biographer 
tells  us  of  the  anxiety  of  Coleman,  the  editor  of  the 
Post,  to  know  who  his  mysterious  correspondents 
were.  They  made  up  their  minds  one  night  to  go 
to  his  house  and  reveal  themselves. 

"  They  were  ushered  into  the  parlour ;  the  editor 
soon  entered,  the  young  poets  expressed  a  desire  for 
a  few  minutes'  strictly  private  conversation  with 
him,  and  the  door  being  closed  and  locked,  Dr. 
Drake  said :  c  I  am  Croaker,  and  this  gentleman, 
sir,  is  Croaker  Junior/  Coleman  stared  at  the 
young  men  with  indescribable  and  unaffected  aston 
ishment,  at  length  exclaiming,  (  My  God !  I  had  no 
idea  that  we  had  such  talents  in  America ! ' 

This,  by  the  way,  seems  to  have  been  a  favourite 
idea  with  editors  of  the  time,  for  only  two  years  had 
passed  since  the  instinctive  expression  of  Richard 
H.  Dana's  similar  misgivings  about  the  origin  of 


n8  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

"  Thanatopsis."  If  the  editors  were  easily  surprised, 
there  is  something  answerably  refreshing  and  youth 
ful  in  the  tale  that  Drake,  after  reading  the  proof 
of  one  of  the  Croaker  verses,  "  laid  his  cheek  down 
upon  the  lines  he  had  written,  and  looking  at  his 
fellow-poet  with  beaming  eyes,  said,  c  O  Halleck, 
is  n't  this  happiness ! '  For  a  clearer  actual 
vision  of  the  romantic  pair,  we  may  thank  Cole- 
man's  report  to  Bryant  of  the  momentous  Croaker 
interview  :  "  Drake  looked  the  poet ;  you  saw  the 
stamp  of  genius  in  every  feature.  Halleck  had  the 
aspect  of  a  satirist." 

In  this  year  of  1819  Drake  wrote  his  ringing 
lines,  "  The  American  Flag,"  for  which  Halleck 
supplied  the  conclusion,  and  in  the  next  year  he 
died.  "  There  will  be  less  sunshine  for  me  here 
after,  now  that  Joe  is  gone,"  said  Halleck  as  he 
returned  from  his  friend's  funeral.  The  more 
enduring  expression  of  his  loss  is  the  elegy  written 
on  the  day  of  Drake's  death,  and  beginning  with 
the  lines,  perhaps  more  familiar  than  any  others 
from  his  pen : 

"Green  be  the  turf  above  thee, 
Friend  of  my  better  days! 
None  knew,  thee  but  to  love  thee, 
Nor  named  thee  but  to  praise." 

Halleck  lived  a  lifetime  of  nearly  half  a  century 
after  his  friend's  death,  but  it  was  on  the  work  that 


1 


HALLECK  AT  75. 
From  an  engraving  of  a  photograph  by  Brady. 


OF  THB 

UNIVERSITY 


WILLIS,   HALLECK,   AND    DRAKE  119 

he  did  between  1817  and  1827,  when  his  Alnwick 
Castle,  with  other  Poems,  was  published  anony 
mously,  that  his  fame  must  chiefly  rest.  In  1819 
his  Fanny  had  appeared,  full  of  brightness  and  local 
hits  at  persons  to  whom  he  made  reparation  many 
years  later  in  an  edition  with  notes.  So  great  was 
the  favour  in  which  this  production  was  held  that 
Brevoort,  the  friend  of  Irving,  declared  frankly  in 
1820,  "that  he  should  be  prouder  of  being  the 
author  of  Fanny  than  of  any  poetical  work  ever 
written  in  America."  Such  a  statement  as  this  has 
not  its  least  value  as  a  reminder  of  the  condition  of 
the  American  Parnassus  at  the  time.  Halleck' s 
volume  of  1827  showed  that  an  improvement  had 
begun,  for  it  contained  his  "  Marco  Bozzaris," 
"  Burns,"  and  most  of  the  other  poems  on  the 
strength  of  which  Poe,  in  1846,  gave  him  the 
second  place  among  American  poets.  This  is 
the  arrangement  of  Poe's  list : 

"Bryant,  Halleck,  Dana,  Sprague,  Longfellow, 
Willis,  and  so  on,  Halleck  coming  second  in  the 
series,  but  holding,  in  fact,  a  rank  in  the  public 
opinion  quite  equal  to  that  of  Bryant."  A  little 
later  he  makes  himself  surer  of  his  ground  by  saying 
"  that  Mr.  Halleck,  in  the  apparent  public  estimate, 
maintains  a  somewhat  better  position  than  that 
to  which,  on  absolute  grounds,  he  is  entitled." 

Be  that  as  it  may,  the  "  public  estimate  "  ranked 
him  very  high  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  wrote 


120  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

practically  nothing  from  1827  until  1864,  when  he 
brought  forth  "  Young  America/'  a  poem,  or  suc 
cession  of  lyrics,  which  seem  to  have  been  due 
equally  to  the  war  and  to  the  enterprising  Bonner 
of  the  Ledger.  The  poet's  fame  to-day  and  in  the 
future,  as  in  the  past,  will  stand  or  fall  without  the 
aid  of  this  evening  song. 

Halleck's  life  was  about  as  uneventful  as  the 
visits  of  his  Muse  were  infrequent.  He  held  posi 
tions  in  several  business  offices  before  he  became 
the  confidential  clerk  of  John  Jacob  Astor.  Once 
he  went  abroad,  but  evidently  he  cared  more  for 
seeing  places  than  persons,  and  the  record  of  his 
travels  is  mainly  a  long  and  accurate  list  of  the 
towns  at  which  he  stopped.  His  deafness,  due  to 
the  discharge  of  a  drunken  militiaman's  gun  by  his 
ear  when  he  was  a  child,  made  his  part  in  the 
society  of  New  York  a  little  less  prominent  than  it 
might  otherwise  have  been,  for  his  wit  and  charm, 
which  have  been  defined  as  Gallic,  won  him  many 
friends,  and  in  spite  of  his  disability  and  shyness 
the  demand  for  his  company  at  social  gatherings 
almost  always  exceeded  his  willingness  to  supply  it. 
Lowell  felt  in  Halleck's  work  the  effect  of  the  re 
stricting  circumstances  of  his  life  "  In  a  world  of 
back-offices,  ledgers,  and  stoves,"  and  in  that "  Fable 
for  Critics "  which  possesses  the  quality  almost 
unique  in  contemporary  criticism  of  not  passing 
"  out  of  date,"  one  finds  a  generous  expression  of 


WILLIS,   HALLECK,   AND    DRAKE       121 


FAC-SIMILE  OF  AN  UNPUBLISHED  LETTER  OF  HALLECK'S. 


122  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

regret  "  that  so  much  of  a  man  has  been  peddled 
away." 

Halleck  never  married,  yet  if  the  saying  of 
a  "  superior  woman "  may  be  believed,  he  could 
not  have  been  without  his  attractions.  This  lady 
is  reported  to  have  declared,  "  If  I  were  on  my  way 
to  church  to  be  married,  yes,  even  if  I  were  walking 
up  the  aisle,  and  Halleck  were  to  offer  himself,  I'd 
leave  the  man  I  had  promised  to  marry  and  take 
him!"  To  this  perhaps  should  be  joined  his  epi 
gram  written  for  a  young  lady  who  asked  for  his 
autograph : 

"  There  wanted  but  this  drop  to  fill 
The  wifeless  poet's  cup  of  fame. 
Hurrah  !  there  lives  a  lady  still, 
Willing  to  take  his  name." 

At  the  same  time  one  significant  story  of  his  de 
ference  to  the  opposite  sex  may  well  be  repeated. 
In  1821  he  was  travelling  as  the  only  passen 
ger  in  a  stage-coach  in  the  Wyoming  Valley. 
He  had  lighted  a  capital  cigar,  when  the  coach 
stopped  and  an  elderly  woman  got  in.  True  to 
his  principles,  he  immediately  threw  away  the 
cigar,  which,  unhappily,  was  his  last,  when,  to  his 
horror,  the  woman  produced  a  pipe  and  for  fifteen 
miles  puffed  forth  the  smoke  of  her  wretched 
tobacco.  "  I  shall  on  my  deathbed,"  said  Halleck 
afterward,  "  undoubtedly  recall  with  horror,  as  I  do 


WILLIS,    HALLECK,   AND    DRAKE     123 

at  the  present  moment,    that    fearful    pipe  and  its 
smoker." 

The  poet  was  a  conservative  to  the  core.  It 
was  characteristic  of  him,  when  he  went  to  hear 
Thackeray  lecture  on  George  IV.,  to  get  up  and 
leave  the  hall.  The  king  who  invented  a  shoe- 
buckle  was  still  to  him  "the  first  gentleman  in 
Europe,"  and  of  Thackeray  he  could  only  say,  "  I 
can't  listen  any  longer  to  his  abuse  of  a  better  man 
than  himself."  It  was  also  like  him  when  Mr. 
Astor  died,  and  left  him  #200  a  year  —  a  bequest 
which  Mr.  William  B.  Astor  afterward  increased 
by  the  gift  of  $  10,000  —  to  retire  in  1849  to  his 
native  town  of  Guilford,  and  with  the  sister  who 
was  his  lifelong  friend  to  pass  the  rest  of  his  days 
in  quiet.  Here  he  died  on  November  19,  1867. 
Since  his  niche  in  the  pantheon  of  our  earlier 
writers  had  been  assigned  to  him,  a  troop  of 
younger  men  had  come  upon  the  scene,  and  most 
of  the  Knickerbocker  figures  had  lost  something  of 
their  first  distinction.  Yet  if  his  place  was  never 
so  glittering  as  that  of  Willis,  nor  so  vividly  won 
as  Drake's,  it  was  all  his  own,  as  theirs  belonged  to 
them.  The  memory  of  these  three,  if  not  their 
written  word,  speaks  one  thing  clearly  to  us  still, 
that  the  fame  best  worth  winning  is  hardly  a  plant 
which  "  in  broad  rumour  lies,"  except  in  so  far  as 
posterity  is  concerned  therewith.  But  who  shall 
say  that  it  would  be  better  for  creators  or  critics  to 


i24  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

have  the  power  of  projecting  themselves  fifty  or 
seventy-five  years  into  the  future  ?  One  result  of 
such  a  power  would  surely  be  that  much  less  would 
be  written  and  much  less  said  about  it. 


THE    HISTORIANS,  ESPECIALLY  PRES- 
COTT  AND  PARKMAN 

IT  is  the  present  fashion  to  speak  lightly  of  the 
"  Puritan  conscience."  Men  and  women  apolo 
gise  for  the  necessity  of  exercising  it,  as  if  it  were 
an  hereditary  taint  from  which  it  is  difficult  or  im 
possible  to  escape.  Yet  it  is  an  axiom  that  the  spirit 
out  of  which  it  grows  has  wrought  many  of  our  best 
achievements;  and  to  a  high  degree  it  has  domi 
nated  the  most  conspicuous  writers  of  history  in 
America.  By  ancestry,  birth,  and  training,  Ban 
croft,  Prescott,  Motley,  and  Parkman  represented 
the  essence  of  New  England.  They  were  all  sons 
of  Massachusetts  and  of  Harvard,  and  at  least  three 
of  them  belonged  entirely  to  that  class  of  the  com 
munity  of  which  Mr.  Howells  wrote  not  long  ago : 
"  If  one  names  over  the  men  who  gave  Boston  her 
supremacy  in  literature  during  the  Unitarian  har 
vest-time  of  the  old  Puritanic  seed-time  which  was 
her  Augustan  age,  one  names  the  people  who  were 
and  who  had  been  socially  first  in  the  city  ever  since 
the  self-exile  of  the  Tories  at  the  time  of  the  Rev 
olution."  The  historians,  in  their  inherited  points 


126  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

of  view,  therefore,  had  much  in  common.  In  the 
precincts  of  the  body,  as  of  the  mind,  they  were 
neighbours,  for  at  various  times  of  their  lives  they 
all  lived  in  houses  that  faced  or  were  within  a  stone's 
throw  of  Boston  Common.  Yet  the  circumstances 
of  their  lives  naturally  divide  them  into  pairs,  Ban 
croft  and  Motley  on  one  side  of  the  dividing  line, 
Prescott  and  Parkman  on  the  other. 

Of  all  the  four,  George  Bancroft  must  be  called 
least  the  Bostonian,  inasmuch  as  he  belonged  most 
to  the  world  which  lies  unseen  from  the  State  House 
dome.  In  the  first  place,  he  was  not  born  in  Bos 
ton,  but  in  Worcester,  where  his  father,  the  author 
of  a  Life  of  Washington  once  widely  read,  was  a 
Unitarian  minister.  But  the  boy  came  to  Harvard, 
and  graduated  at  seventeen  in  the  class  of  1817. 
From  Cambridge  he  proceeded  to  Gottingen,  where 
he  won  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Philosophy,  and  to 
Berlin.  When  he  returned  to  America,  he  was  one 
of  the  very  few  amongst  our  countrymen  at  that 
time  who  knew  anything  at  first  hand  about  the 
methods  and  spirit  of  exact  European  scholarship, 
and  he  possessed  the  further  distinction  of  having 
made  the  personal  acquaintance  of  Goethe  and 
Byron.  After  a  year  of  service  as  a  tutor  in  Greek 
at  Harvard  College,  he  became  in  1823  one  of  the 
principals  of  the  Round  Hill  School  at  North 
ampton,  Massachusetts,  —  an  experiment  in  cc  sec 
ondary  instruction "  which  was  continued  for  ten 


From  a  private  plate  etched  by  H.  B.  Hall,  Sr.,  in  1868. 


or  THX 

tJlflVERSITT 


THE    HISTORIANS  127 

years,  in  spite  of  its  having  come  several  decades  in 
advance  of  its  time. 

Throughout  the  lifetime  and  for  several  years 
after  the  death  of  his  first  wife,  whose  family  were 
prominent  Whigs,  Bancroft,  a  Democrat,  refrained 
from  political  activity ;  but  when  Van  Buren  ap 
pointed  him  Collector  of  the  port  of  Boston  in 
1837,  he  accepted  the  office,  and  from  that  time  for 
ward  was  a  prominent  figure  in  national  affairs. 
Under  Polk  he  became  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  and 
made  his  term  of  office  especially  memorable  by 
establishing  the  Annapolis  Academy.  His  public 
service  was  marked  by  other  achievements,  however, 
and  gained  great  distinction  in  subsequent  years  by 
his  performance  of  the  duties  of  minister  of  the 
United  States  at  London  and  Berlin. 

It  "has  been  said  by  one  writer  about  Bancroft : 
"  A  man  who  makes  part  of  the  history  of  his  own 
time,  can  better  write  that  of  another ; "  and  un 
doubtedly  Bancroft's  practical  knowledge  of  Ameri 
can  government,  no  less  than  his  German  habits  of 
scholarship,  contributed  to  his  special  qualifications 
for  becoming  the  historian  of  our  national  begin 
nings.  The  early  volumes  of  his  History  of  the 
United  States  were  written,  to  be  sure,  before  his 
political  life  had  begun;  but  of  the  ten  volumes 
which  appeared  between  1834  and  1875,  eignt  were 
published  after  his  entrance  into  politics.  His 
work,  both  in  affairs  and  in  authorship,  rendered 


128  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

him  eminently  a  citizen  of  the  world,  and  long 
before  he  died  in  1891,  New  York,  Washington, 
and  Newport  had  each  become  more  his  home  than 
Boston  or  its  neighbourhood. 

There  are  curious  analogies  of  circumstance  be 
tween  the  careers  of  Bancroft  and  of  John  Lothrop 
Motley.  After  studying  at  Bancroft's  school  at 
Round  Hill,  Motley,  like  his  master,  graduated 
from  Harvard  College  at  seventeen — in  1813. 
Like  Bancroft  he  continued  his  studies  at  Berlin 
and  Gottingen,  where  he  was  intimate  with  Bis 
marck.  Bancroft,  destined  by  his  parents  for  the 
ministry,  had  made  his  first  literary  venture  in  a 
volume  of  poems ;  Motley,  intended  for  the  law, 
attempted  fiction  before  giving  himself  to  politics 
and  history.  Like  Bancroft  he  did  his  most  con 
spicuous  national  service  as  Minister  of  the  United 
States,  first  at  Vienna  and  then  at  the  court  of  St. 
James  ;  but,  far  less  to  the  credit  of  our  government 
than  of  Motley,  he  felt  obliged  to  resign  from  the 
first  post,  and  was  recalled  from  the  second.  His 
biographer,  Dr.  Holmes,  has  described  each  of 
these  "  incidents  "  —  to  use  the  gentle  term  of  di 
plomacy  —  in  such  a  way  as  to  leave  little  doubt 
that  a  sensitive  and  high-minded  public  servant  was 
cruelly  wronged  by  their  means. 

But  if  Motley  did  not  receive  his  due  from  the 
administrations  he  represented,  there  was  never  any 
dearth  of  honour  for  his  work  as  an  historian. 


From  a  photograph  by  Newnham  &  Field,  Bournemouth,  where 
Motley  spent  the  winter  of  1872-3. 


THE   HISTORIANS  129 

Prescott  stood  aside  for  him  to  write  The  Rise  of  the 
Dutch  Republic,  as  Irving  had  already  yielded  up 
his  subject  of  the  Conquest  of  Mexico  to  Prescott ; 
and  the  honest  admiration  which  each  of  these  gen 
erous  men  felt  for  the  book  he  had  meant  to  write 
himself,  was  no  more  sincere  than  the  admiration  of 
all  the  reading  world  for  Motley's  three  great  his 
torical  pictures  of  the  struggle  for  liberty  in  the 
Netherlands.  The  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic  was 
published  in  1856,  the  History  of  the  United  Nether 
lands  in  1861-68,  and  The  Life  and  Death  of  John 
of  Barneveld  in  1 874.  Of  his  theme  he  once  wrote  : 
<c  I  had  not  first  made  up  my  mind  to  write  a  his 
tory,  and  then  cast  about  to  take  up  a  subject. 
My  subject  had  taken  me  up,  drawn  me  on,  and 
absorbed  me  into  itself."  Motley's  friends  knew 
with  what  indefatigable  labour  in  the  libraries  and 
state  archives  of  Europe  he  had  prepared  himself 
for  his  task ;  they  were  sure,  too,  of  the  rare  per 
sonal  qualities  which  must  enter  into  any  work  of 
his  hand  and  brain,  for  they  knew  him  best  in  his 
life  of  a  studious  private  citizen  whose  gifts  and 
personality  of  uncommon  charm  won  him  distinc 
tion  wherever  he  might  be.  Dr.  Holmes  has  told 
how  he  shone  at  the  meetings  of  the  Saturday  Club 
in  Boston,  and  we  know  that  dim  lights  were  easily 
obscured  when  Lowell  and  Emerson  and  their  com 
rades  were  shining  together.  Of  all  their  company 
none  had  or  deserved  warmer  friendships,  within 

9 


130  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

and  without  their  circle,  than  Motley.  He  died  in 
England  in  1877. 

To  attempt  to  give  in  a  brief  space  any  adequate 
idea  of  all  the  four  historians  who  have  been  named, 
would  be  futile.  Perhaps  a  better  purpose  will  be 
served  by  looking  somewhat  nearly  at  Prescott  and 
Parkman,  who  in  many  important  points,  though 
not  all,  stand  related  to  each  other  more  closely 
than  Bancroft  and  Motley. 

The  "books  without  which  no  gentleman's 
library  is  complete  "  look  very  much  alike  on  the 
well-ordered  shelves.  Their  backs,  nearly  uniform, 
are  as  those  of  a  company  of  persons  whose  lives 
are  regulated  by  one  unvarying  set  of  conventions. 
Yet  we  all  know  what  different  stories  their  pages 
tell,  and  if  we  are  curious  to  learn  the  histories  of 
their  own  production,  we  find  ourselves  dealing  with 
the  most  human  of  records,  as  various  as  the  inmost 
lives  of  men.  There  are  stories  of  patient  toil,  dis 
appointments,  failures,  hopes,  and  noble  victories, 
and  the  life-blood  of  one  man  gives  its  colour  to 
each  separate  story.  What  we  read  between  the 
pages  of  Prescott  and  Parkman,  who,  like  the  blind 
historian  Thierry,  "  made  friends  with  darkness,"  is 
a  tale  of  unflinching  courage  and  successful  struggle, 
not  in  spurts  of  a  few  months  or  years,  but  for  a 
lifetime,  against  difficulties  so  disheartening  that  a 
man  might  own  them  too  much  for  him  and  yet 
prove  himself  no  coward.  The  "  Puritan  con- 


THE   HISTORIANS  131 

science,"  or  the  Puritan  will,  has  rarely  been  put 
more  rigorously  to  the  test  than  in  the  work  which 
these  two  men  elected  to  do. 

Struggle  was  familiar  to  the  stock  from  which 
William  Hickling  Prescott  came.  His  first  ances 
tor  in  this  country,  John  Prescott,  settling  in  the 
Massachusetts  Lancaster  which  was  named  for  his 
English  home,  did  brave  deeds  in  King  Philip's 
War.  He  was  a  man  of  stalwart  figure,  and  struck 
terror  to  the  Indians  by  entering  the  fight  in  a  suit 
of  armour,  which  he  is  said  to  have  worn  in  service 
under  Cromwell.  The  historian's  grandfather, 
Colonel  William  Prescott,  came  from  his  farm  at 
Pepperell  to  command  the  American  troops  at 
Bunker  Hill.  The  grandfather  of  Prescott's  wife, 
Captain  John  Linzee,  commanded  the  British  sloop- 
of-war  Falcon  as  she  took  her  part  in  the  action  of 
the  same  day  ;  and  any  reader  who  recalls  the  open 
ing  words  of  The  Virginians  knows  what  became 
of  the  swords  the  colonel  and  the  captain  wore  in 
the  memorable  fight.  Prescott  was  well  pleased, 
as  he  said  in  a  letter  to  an  English  friend,  by 
Thackeray's  "  very  nice  tribute  to  my  old  swords  of 
Bunker  Hill  renown,  and  to  their  unworthy  proprie 
tor.  It  was  very  prettily  done  of  him."  When 
Prescott  died  the  crossed  swords  were  transferred 
from  his  library  wall  to  a  similar  place  in  the  rooms 
of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society.  The  vic 
tories  won  by  Prescott's  father,  Judge  William 


AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

Prescott,  were  those  of  peace.  Daniel  Webster 
declared  that  he  stood  at  the  very  head  of  the 
Massachusetts  Bar. 

The  boy  who  was  to  become  the  historian  was 
the  second  of  seven  children,  and  was  born  in  Salem 
on  May  4,  1796.  When  he  was  twelve  years  old 
his  father  and  his  family  came  to  live  in  Boston. 
Here  the  boy  was  sent  to  the  school  of  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Gardiner,  who,  having  himself  been  taught  as  a 
boy  in  England  by  the  celebrated  Dr.  Parr,  linked 
close  together  the  learning  of  the  Old  World  and 
the  New.  The  stories  of  youthful  precocity  are  not 
so  abundantly  told  of  Prescott  as  of  many  other 
men  distinguished  in  later  life.  He  learned  readily, 
and  came  to  care  for  books  like  any  boy  of  quick 
mind  in  a  family  which  did  not  give  the  first  place 
to  material  things.  When  he  entered  Harvard 
College  as  a  sophomore  in  1811,  it  was  not  hard  for 
him  to  stand  well  in  scholarship,  and  to  stand  first 
seems  never  to  have  been  his  controlling  wish. 
The  pleasures  of  the  place  appealed  to  him  quite  as 
strongly  as  its  duties,  yet  it  is  here  that  he  is  first 
found  regulating  his  conduct  by  what  he  afterward 
called  "  the  last  infirmity  of  feeble  minds  "  —  good 
resolutions.  "  I  shall  never  be  too  old  to  make 
them,"  he  said  again  in  later  life :  "  See  if  I  shall 
ever  be  old  enough  to  keep  them."  In  his  own 
way  he  always  tried  hard  to  fulfil  the  better  pur 
poses  for  which  they  stood,  and  imposed  upon  him- 


THE    HISTORIANS  133 

self  all  manner  of  fines  and  forfeits  to  be  paid  for 
failures.  What  his  own  way  sometimes  was,  espe 
cially  in  earlier  years,  may  be  inferred  from  an  anec 
dote  of  his  travels  abroad.  An  oculist  in  Paris  had 
advised  him  to  simplify  his  diet  by  never  taking 
more  than  two  glasses  of  wine  a  day.  As  he  went 
from  place  to  place,  therefore,  "  one  of  the  first 
things  Prescott  did  was  to  require  the  waiter  to 
show  him  specimens  of  all  the  wine-glasses  the 
house  afforded.  He  would  then  pick  out  from 
among  them  the  largest ;  and  this,  though  it  might 
contain  two  or  three  times  the  quantity  of  a  com 
mon  wine-glass,  he  would  have  se,t  by  his  plate 
as  his  measure  at  dinner  to  observe  the  rule  in." 
In  contrast  with  the  superhuman  strictness  which 
ruled  his  later  years,  this  record  of  boyish  ingenuity 
is  good  to  read.  The  work  of  a  moment  in  his 
college  days,  however,  brought  about  such  dire 
results  that  the  early  acquisition  of  method  as  the 
law  of  his  life  stood  him  perhaps  in  better  stead 
than  any  other  portion  of  his  training. 

When  the  college  officers  had  left  the  students  in 
the  Commons  Hall  one  day  after  dinner,  there  was 
a  frolic  of  a  sort  not  unknown  to  later  generations. 
Prescott  had  had  no  part  in  it,  and  was  leaving  the 
table,  when  something  caused  him  to  look  back.  At 
the  instant  of  his  turning,  his  open  eye,  the  left, 
was  violently  struck  by  a  large  piece  of  hard  bread 
thrown  without  special  aim  in  his  direction.  With 


134  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

the  blind  hero  of  the  blind  poet  he  might  well  have 
said, 

"  Why  was  the  sight 
To  such  a  tender  ball  as  th'  eye  confin'd, 
So  obvious  and  so  easy  to  be  quencht  ? " 

He  fell  senseless  to  the  ground,  was  carried  to  his 
father's  house  in  Boston,  where  he  became  alarm 
ingly  ill,  and  soon  it  was  found  that  his  left  eye, 
though  never  bearing  any  outward  mark  of  the 
blow,  had  entirely  lost  its  vision.  After  a  few 
weeks  he  was  able  to  return  to  college  and,  with 
greater  caution,  to  pursue  his  studies,  which  he  did 
with  credit  until  his  graduation  in  1814.  His 
family  celebrated  the  day,  and  his  reading  of  a 
Latin  poem,  "Ad  Spem"  a  goddess  he  had  good 
need  to  invoke,  by  entertaining  five  hundred  of 
their  friends  at  dinner  under  a  tent  in  Cambridge. 
Whether  the  undergraduate  who  threw  the  bread 
was  one  of  the  guests  history  does  not  relate  ;  but 
it  is  recorded  that,  thinking  himself  unknown,  he 
never  expressed  compunction  for  what  he  had  done 
or  sympathy  with  Prescott,  who  in  reality  did  know 
him,  and  in  later  years,  when  the  results  of  the 
accident  had  been  long  established,  spoke  the  timely 
word  which  secured  the  offender  a  comfortable  post 
for  life. 

Nature  could  not  have  bestowed  a  more  service 
able  gift  upon  Prescott  than  that  which  enabled  a 
friend  to  say  of  him  :  "  He  could  be  happy  in  more 


THE    HISTORIANS  135 

ways,  and  more  happy  in  every  one  of  them 
than  any  other  person  I  have  ever  known."  Very 
soon  his  resources  of  good  cheer  and  courage  were 
taxed  to  the  uttermost,  for  the  uninjured  eye  began 
to  show  that  sympathy  which  an  eye  often  expresses 
toward  its  injured  mate  to  the  utter  disregard  of 
the  sympathy  due  to  the  owner  of  both  of  them. 
His  right  eye  became  inflamed  and  so  painful  as  to 
affect  most  seriously  the  health  of  his  entire  body. 
Indeed,  the  defects  of  his  vision  seemed  then  and 
later  to  be  but  a  part  of  a  general  rheumatism. 
Of  the  time  when  he  was  thus  first  confined  in  a 
dark  room  his  mother  afterward  said :  "  I  never  in 
a  single  instance  groped  my  way  across  the  apart 
ment,  to  take  my  place  at  his  side,  that  he  did  not 
salute  me  with  some  expression  of  good  cheer  — 
not  a  single  instance  —  as  if  we  were  the  patients 
and  his  place  were  to  comfort  us." 

His  mother's  father,  Thomas  Hickling,  was  the 
Consul  of  the  United  States  at  St.  Michael's  Island 
in  the  Azores,  and  thither  the  young  man  was  sent 
in  the  hope  that  the  sea  voyage  and  the  different 
life  would  mend  his  health.  But  he  had  not  been 
there  long  when  the  dark  room  again  became  his 
habitation.  Within  its  walls  he  sang  aloud  and 
exercised,  walking  hundreds  of  miles,  he  said,  and 
his  cousins,  admitting  a  little  light  on  the  page  of  a 
book,  read  to  him  by  the  hour.  But  neither  the 
life  at  St.  Michael's  nor  the  advice  of  the  specialists 


136  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

he  consulted  in  London  and  Paris,  when  he  was 
able  to  continue  his  journeys,  gave  him  any  material 
help.  Nothing  which  he  brought  home  with  him 
in  1817  was  of  such  value  as  his  "  noctograph,"  a 
contrivance  made  by  one  of  the  famous  Wedgwood 
family  for  writing  without  using  the  eyes.  It  had 
the  appearance  of  a  portfolio,  about  nine  by  ten 
inches  in  size.  When  unfolded  it  was  seen  to  be 
crossed  by  sixteen  parallel  brass  wires.  Underneath 
them  was  a  sheet  of  carbonated  paper,  over  the 
white  paper  which  was  to  receive  the  writing.  An 
ivory  stylus,  kept  within  bounds  by  the  wires  and 
an  outside  frame,  made  the  impression  through  the 
one  sheet  upon  the  other.  With  the  aid  of  this 
device  all  of  Prescott's  writing  was  done. 

He  did  not  proceed  at  once  upon  his  return 
from  Europe  to  make  himself  an  historian,  but  first 
abandoned  his  hopes  of  studying  law,  and  then 
married.  Fortunately  his  father's  means  were  suffi 
cient  to  relieve  him  of  the  need  of  earning  a  living. 
A  mercantile  career,  which  his  eyesight  would  have 
permitted,  had  no  attractions  for  him,  and  strange 
as  it  may  seem  that  a  life  of  literary  labour  was 
possible  when  a  "  learned  profession  "  was  not,  he 
deliberately  made  up  his  mind  to  undertake  the 
profession  of  letters.  He  believed  it  to  be  possible 
to  make  his  ears  do  the  work  of  his  eyes,  and 
counting  all  the  costs  and  difficulties,  set  about  an 
elaborate  preparation  for  his  chosen  work.  He 


PRESCOTT  AT  62. 

From  an  engraving  by  John  Sartain,  showing  the  historian1 
"  noctograph." 


OF  T»» 


THE   HISTORIANS  137 

began  at  the  bottom  by  studying  Lindley  Murray's 
grammar,  and  listening  with  critical  care  while  the 
masters  of  English  style,  from  Roger  Ascham  down 
to  his  own  contemporaries,  were  read  aloud  to  him. 
Then  he  attacked  French  and  Italian.  German 
appears  to  have  been  too  much  for  him,  and 
Spanish  was  taken  in  its  stead.  He  was  not  like 
the  person  to  whom  Carlyle  objected  as  trying  to 
persuade  himself  and  others  "  that  he  knows  about 
things  when  he  does  not  know  more  than  the  out 
side  skin  of  them."  The  list  of  the  books  he  read, 
and  the  uses  to  which  he  put  his  reading  in  schol 
arly  contributions  on  various  subjects  to  the  "  Old 
North,"  as  the  North  American  Review  was  nick 
named,  would  shame  many  a  man  with  no  more 
than  the  ordinary  difficulties  to  contend  against. 
The  beginning  of  his  Spanish  studies  was  due  to 
his  cherished  friend,  ultimately  his  biographer, 
George  Ticknor,  who  in  the  autumn  of  1824  read 
him  the  lectures  on  Spanish  literature  which  he  had 
prepared  for  the  Senior  Class  of  Harvard  College. 
Soon  afterward  Prescott  was  casting  about  for  the 
subject  of  a  history  to  which  he  should  devote  his 
serious  efforts,  and  one  of  the  personal  Memoranda, 
which  he  continued  to  make  through  his  life,  is 
found  to  read,  "  I  subscribe  myself  to  the  History  of 
the  Reign  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  January  I9th, 
1826."  A  letter  which  he  wrote  immediately  to 
Alexander  H.  Everett,  our  Minister  at  Madrid, 


ij8  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

concerning  his  project,  brought  a  new  injury  to  his 
eye,  and  when  the  books  which  Mr.  Everett  was  to 
send  him  from  Spain  arrived  they  found  him  utterly 
disabled.  "  With  my  transatlantic  treasures  lying 
around  me,"  he  wrote  at  a  later  day,  "  I  was  like 
one  pining  from  hunger  in  the  midst  of  abun 
dance." 

How  was  it  possible,  one  asks,  for  a  man  in  his 
condition  to  do  anything  ?  The  beginnings  were 
indeed  discouraging.  His  first  reader  knew  noth 
ing  of  Spanish.  "  I  cannot  even  now  recall  to  my 
mind  without  a  smile,"  wrote  Prescott  near  his 
death,  "  the  tedious  hours  in  which,  seated  under 
some  old  trees  in  my  country  residence,  we  pursued 
our  slow  and  melancholy  way  over  pages  which 
afforded  no  glimmering  of  light  to  him,  and  from 
which  the  light  came  dimly  struggling  to  me 
through  a  half-intelligible  vocabulary."  A  second 
reader  who  knew  the  language  was  better,  but  best 
of  all  were  Prescott's  own  strength  and  courage. 
As  he  listened  he  jotted  notes  upon  his  noctograph; 
afterward  these  were  copied  out  and  read  to  him,  and 
as  he  exercised  afoot  or  on  horseback  his  vigorous 
mind  brought  form  out  of  chaos.  His  composition 
was  all  done,  the  corrections  were  made  before  he 
began  to  dictate  his  successive  chapters  to  his 
amanuensis.  It  is  said  that  he  could  carry  sixty 
pages  of  his  printed  work  accurately  in  mind  before 
committing  it  in  this  way  to  paper.  The  wonder  is 


THE    HISTORIANS  139 

not  that  it  took  him  ten  years  to  complete  his  first 
work,  but  that  he  could  do  it  at  all.  When  Ferdi 
nand  and  Isabella ,  bearing  the  imprint  of  1838,  was 
published,  nearly  two  years  after  its  completion,  the 
author  of  it  was  immediately  accorded  a  place  in  the 
front  rank  of  historians.  Even  the  Quarterly  Re 
view  was  good  enough  to  call  the  book  "  by  much 
the  first  historical  work  which  British  America  has 
as  yet  produced." 

The  methodical  habits  of  Prescott's  early  days 
constantly  played  an  important  part  in  his  labours 
and  his  pleasures.  His  hours  were  so  scrupulously 
laid  out,  that  when  the  appointed  minute  came  for 
putting  down  a  novel  that  was  read  aloud  to  the 
family  circle,  Prescott  was  inexorable,  no  matter 
where  or  how  the  hero  and  heroine  were  to  be  left. 
If  ten  o'clock  was  his  bedtime,  he  was  capable,  when 
the  hour  struck,  of  leaving  a  company  of  bachelor 
friends  whom  he  was  entertaining  at  dinner,  telling 
them  to  call  for  whatever  they  desired,  "  and  if  you 
don't  go  home  till  morning,  I  wish  you  a  merry  night 
of  it."  In  the  morning  when  he  was  waked,  he 
gave  himself  time  to  count  twenty,  and  if  he  failed 
to  jump  out  of  bed  when  he  had  done  so,  he  paid 
a  fine  of  his  own  exaction  to  the  servant  who  had 
called  him.  His  tailor  marked  his  clothes  with  the 
number  of  ounces  each  garment  weighed,  and  being 
told  exactly  where  the  thermometer  stood,  he  dressed 
himself  accordingly.  Every  morning  for  a  long 


1 40  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

period,  even  in  the  coldest  weather,  he  rode  on  his 
horse  from  Boston  to  watch  the  sunrise  from  a  par 
ticular  spot  in  Jamaica  Plain.  In  his  library  the 
blue  window  shades  were  so  arranged  that  the  light 
could  be  kept  at  a  uniform  dimness,  even  as  succes 
sive  clouds  crossed  the  sun.  He  "  reckoned  time," 
he  said,  "  by  eyesight,  as  distances  on  railroads  are 
reckoned  by  hours." 

The  catalogue  of  his  rigours  with  himself  might 
be  lengthened  to  such  an  extent  as  to  make  him  seem 
quite  without  the  charm  that  springs  from  impulse, 
but  justice  forbids  one  to  leave  unmentioned  the 
gentler  graces  of  his  life  —  the  tender  devotion  to 
his  parents,  wife,  and  children,  the  social  gift  which 
made  the  acquaintance  think  himself  a  friend,  and 
the  friend  know  himself  to  be  fortunate  beyond 
most  men  in  the  friendship  with  such  a  man.  In 
his  father's  house  and  his  own  in  Boston,  and  the 
summer  places  at  Pepperell,  Nahant,  and  Lynn,  all 
these  graces  stood  forth  against  a  background  of 
dignity  and  beauty.  How  he  struck  a  contempo 
rary  is  delightfully  shown  in  a  passage  from  a  letter 
of  Longfellow's  in  1838  to  his  friend  Greene  in 
Rome :  "  This  morning  as  I  was  sitting  at  break 
fast,  a  gentleman  on  horseback  sent  up  word  that  I 
should  come  down  to  him.  It  was  Prescott,  author 
of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella.  He  is  an  early  riser  and 
rides  about  the  country.  There  on  his  horse  sat 
the  great  author.  He  is  one  of  the  best  fellows  in 


PRESCOTT  IN   HIS   LIBRARY. 
From  a  portrait  by  Chappel,  after  a  photograph. 


THE    HISTORIANS  141 

the  world,  and  very  much  my  friend ;  handsome, 
gay,  and  forty  ;  a  great  diner-out ;  gentle,  compan 
ionable,  and  modest ;  quite  astonished  to  find  him 
self  so  famous." 

Prescott's  greatest  popular  success  was  won  by 
the  Conquest  of  Mexico,  to  which  the  five  years  of  his 
life  after  1838  were  devoted.  On  the  appearance 
of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  Sydney  Smith  had  said, 
"  When  Prescott  comes  to  England,  a  Caspian  Sea 
of  soup  awaits  him."  But  it  was  not  until  1850, 
three  years  after  the  Conquest  of  Peru  had  won  him 
his  third  laurels,  that  he  made  the  visit  which  was 
little  less  than  a  triumphal  progress  through  the 
most  interesting  houses  of  England.  He  had 
friends  before  going,  none  closer  than  the  head  of  the 
family  in  whose  veins  ran  "  all  the  blood  of  all  the 
Howards,"  and  he  made  many  others  in  his  few 
months  abroad.  A  writer  in  Frasers  Magazine 
after  Prescott's  death  declared  that  "  the  social 
charm  of  Mr.  Prescott,  indescribable  in  words,  but 
certain  in  its  effect,  was  a  subject  for  general  remark 
in  all  circles,  among  bishops  sipping  their  tea  at  the 
Athenaeum,  and  among  young  beauties  rejoicing  in 
their  first  Queen's  ball."  Whenever  he  gave  up  his 
literary  labours  for  a  season,  his  eyesight  gained  in 
strength.  Indeed,  the  doctors  had  told  him  that 
by  abandoning  his  studies  he  would  surely  improve 
his  health  in  every  way;  but  in  1848,  after  relin 
quishing  even  the  slight  occasional  use  he  had  been 


i42  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

able  to  make  of  his  eye  for  reading,  he  had  written 
in  his  Memoranda,  "  At  fifty-two  a  man  must  be 
even  more  crippled  than  I  am  to  be  entitled  to  an 
honourable  discharge  from  service."  Accordingly 
he  kept  his  harness  on  until  the  last.  The  third 
volume  of  Philip  the  Second  appeared  only  the  year 
before  his  death,  which  occurred  in  1859.  A  warn 
ing  stroke  of  apoplexy  had  come  in  the  winter  of 
1858.  On  January  28,  1859,  tne  second  and 
fatal  stroke  befell  him,  and  he  died  within  a  few 
hours. 

It  must  be  frankly  admitted  that,  as  a  name 
to  conjure  with,  Prescott's  has  lost  much  of  its 
potency.  With  Bancroft  in  a  greater,  and  Motley 
probably  in  a  lesser  degree,  is  he  not  now  counted 
amongst  the  writers  about  whose  work,  since  it  is 
supposed  to  be  read  by  everybody,  it  is  safer 
not  to  ask  too  many  searching  questions  ?  Park- 
man's  popularity,  on  the  other  hand,  is  waxing 
rather  than  waning.  His  themes  may  have  some 
thing  to  do  with  it,  his  nearness  in  method  and 
spirit  to  our  own  time  something  more.  As  be 
tween  Prescott  and  Parkman,  the  living  American 
historian  to  whom  the  first  place  is  most  generally 
accorded  to-day  has  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  the 
reality  in  Parkman's  work  makes  the  difference  in 
his  favour.  "  In  reading  Prescott's  account  of  the 
conquest  of  Mexico,"  says  Mr.  Fiske,  "one  feels 
one's  self  in  the  world  of  Arabian  nights ;  indeed, 


THE    HISTORIANS 

the  author  himself,  in  occasional  comments,  lets  us 
see  that  he  is  unable  to  get  rid  of  just  such  a  feel 
ing."  Modern  research  has  shown  that  many  of 
the  statements  made  by  Prescott  on  what  he  ac 
cepted  as  good  authority  were  merely  such  tales  as 
one  should  expect  from  the  land  of  Don  Quixote. 
Parkman,  as  Mr.  Fiske  has  suggestively  pointed 
out,  had  the  unspeakable  advantage  of  dealing  with 
a  life  upon  which  it  was  possible  for  him  to  look 
with  his  own  eyes  before  he  was  deprived  of  their 
use. 

Whatever  contrasts  exist  between  the  work  of 
Prescott  and  Parkman,  they  might  each  have  said 
with  Sir  Walter  Scott,  "  Author  as  I  am,  I  wish 
these  good  people  would  recollect  that  I  began 
with  being  a  gentleman,  and  don't  mean  to  give 
up  the  character."  In  fact,  they  began  with  being 
quite  the  same  kind  of  gentleman,  for  while  Pres 
cott' s  ancestors  were  largely  concerned  with  the 
civil  and  military  affairs  of  Massachusetts,  Park- 
man's  were  identified  with  the  class  which  held 
perhaps  even  a  stronger  control  —  the  Brahmini- 
cal  caste  of  clergymen.  On  his  mother's  side  he 
was  descended  from  John  Cotton.  His  grand 
father,  Samuel  Parkman,  in  whose  house  the  his 
torian  was  born  on  September  16,  1823,  was 
counted  the  richest  merchant  in  Boston,  and  the 
boy's  father,  the  Rev.  Francis  Parkman,  was  a 
Unitarian  minister  of  no  little  eminence.  Two 


I44  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

long-established  "  Parkman  Professorships "  in 
Harvard  University,  one  of  which  was  held  for 
thirty-five  years  by  Dr.  Holmes,  still  stand  for  the 
interest  of  the  family  in  the  sciences  of  medicine 
and  theology.  Into  surroundings  the  most  pro 
pitious,  therefore,  Parkman,  like  Prescott,  was 
born. 

The  authorised  Life  of  Parkman  is  yet  unpub 
lished.  Whatever  new  details  it  may  communicate, 
it  can  add  little  or  nothing  to  our  realisation  of 
Parkman's  personal  courage.  This  is  not  to  be 
gained  so  adequately  from  the  many  sketches  of  his 
career  that  were  written  when  he  died  in  1893,  as 
from  an  autobiographical  paper  which  was  subse 
quently  given  to  the  world.  Mr.  Parkman  wrote 
it  in  1868,  when,  to  be  sure,  he  still  had  a  little 
more  than  a  third  of  his  life  to  live ;  and  as  he  was 
starting  for  Europe  he  handed  it  to  a  friend  with 
the  request  that  it  should  not  be  opened  until  after 
his  death.  When  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society  met  to  commemorate  this  event,  his  friend, 
the  Rev.  Dr.  George  E.  Ellis,  broke  the  seal  of 
the  parcel  he  had  kept  unopened  for  twenty-five 
years,  and  read  the  record  which  Parkman  had 
written  as  dispassionately  as  a  scientist  describing  a 
strange  case  of  bodily  and  mental  illness.  From  this 
record  the  present  impressions  are  largely  drawn. 

Parkman's  boyhood  was  not  altogether  a  period 
of  open-air  activity.  There  were  four  early  years 


PARKMAN   AT   20. 
From  a  Daguerreotype. 


THE   HISTORIANS  145 

spent  on  his  grandfather's  farm  adjoining  the  wild 
Middlesex  Fells,  when  the  frail  little  fellow  learned 
more  from  the  woods  about  him  than  at  the 
"  school  of  high,  but  undeserved  reputation  "  to 
which  he  was  sent.  At  twelve  he  returned  to 
Boston,  and  here  for  four  years  he  devoted  him 
self  to  chemical  experiments  as  ardently  as  he  had 
collected  birds'  eggs  and  trapped  woodchucks  in 
the  country.  His  new  hobby,  he  says,  "  served 
little  other  purpose  than  injuring  him  by  con 
finement,  poisoning  him  with  noxious  gases,  and 
occasionally  scorching  him  with  some  ill-starred 
experiment."  But  at  about  the  time  of  entering 
Harvard  College  with  the  Class  of  1844,  his  pas 
sion  fixed  itself  permanently  upon  the  life  of  the 
woods.  His  nature  was  such  that  he  could  never 
do  anything  by  halves.  The  "  nothing-too-much  " 
principle  of  Prescott's  life  was  totally  foreign  to 
him.  His  college  vacations  were  passed  in  ad 
venturous  expeditions  through  the  districts  of 
New  Hampshire  and  Maine,  then  almost  unex 
plored.  As  early  as  in  his  sophomore  year  he 
resolved  to  write  a  history  of  the  "  Old  French 
War"  which  ended  in  the  English  conquest  of 
Canada.  Here,  he  thought,  the  most  stirring 
scenes  of  forest  drama  had  been  enacted.  A 
brother  of  his  grandfather,  be  it  said,  had  served  in 
this  war  as  a  private  in  a  Massachusetts  regiment. 
But  the  historian  was  doomed  early  to  interruptions 


10 


146  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

in  his  plans.  An  accident  in  the  college  gymna 
sium  sent  him  to  Europe  in  search  of  stronger 
health.  Happening  to  be  in  Rome  in  Holy  Week, 
he  took  his  lodging  in  a  monastery  of  Passionist 
Fathers,  that  he  might  better  understand  the 
monastic  methods  of  the  church  which  ministered 
to  the  Canadian  Indians.  Everything  was  bent 
to  one  purpose.  He  returned  home  in  time  to 
graduate  with  his  class,  and  afterward  yielded  for 
two  years  to  his  family's  wish  that  he  should  study 
law.  But  his  reading  then,  as  in  college,  even  to 
the  neglect  of  other  books,  was  directed  to  the 
theme  upon  which  his  heart  was  set.  In  1846  he 
took  the  step,  in  pursuance  of  his  inflexible  purpose, 
which  cost  him  almost  fatally  dear. 

As  he  had  learned  much  of  woodcraft  and  a  little 
of  priestcraft,  so  he  believed  it  necessary  that  he 
should  know  the  Indian  for  himself,  —  and  not  from 
Schoolcraft.  Accordingly  he  set  out  for  what  was 
then  indeed  the  wild  West  with  his  kinsman,  Mr. 
Quincy  A.  Shaw.  "  A  highly  irritable  organism," 
he  says  of  all  this  period  of  his  life,  "  spurred  the 
writer  to  excess  in  a  course  which,  with  one  of  dif 
ferent  temperament,  would  have  produced  a  free 
and  hardy  development  of  such  faculties  and  forces 
as  he  possessed/*  It  would  be  a  misuse  of  words 
to  employ  any  others  than  those  with  which  Park- 
man  himself  summed  up  the  most  crucial  portions 
of  his  Western  experience :  — 


THE    HISTORIANS  147 

"  A  complication  of  severe  disorders  here  seized 
him,  and  at  one  time  narrowly  missed  bringing  both 
him  and  his  schemes  to  an  abrupt  termination,  but 
yielding  to  a  system  of  starvation,  at  length  assumed 
an  intermittent  and  much  less  threatening  form.  A 
concurrence  of  circumstances  left  him  but  one 
means  of  accomplishing  his  purpose.  This  was  to 
follow  a  large  band  of  Ogillallah  Indians,  known  to 
have  crossed  the  Black  Hill  range  a  short  time 
before.  Reeling  in  the  saddle  with  weakness  and 
pain,  he  set  forth,  attended  by  a  Canadian  hunter. 
With  much  difficulty  the  trail  was  found,  the  Black 
Hills  crossed,  the  reluctance  of  his  follower  over 
come,  and  the  Indians  discovered  on  the  fifth  day 
encamped  near  the  Medicine  Bow  range  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains.  On  a  journey  of  a  hundred 
miles,  over  a  country  in  parts  of  the  roughest,  he 
had  gained  rather  than  lost  strength,  while  his  horse 
was  knocked  up  and  his  companion  disconsolate 
with  a  painful  cough.  Joining  the  Indians,  he 
followed  their  wanderings  for  several  weeks.  To 
have  worn  the  airs  of  an  invalid  would  certainly 
have  been  an  indiscretion,  since  in  that  case  a  horse, 
a  rifle,  a  pair  of  pistols,  and  a  red  shirt  might  have 
offered  temptations  too  strong  for  aboriginal  virtue. 
Yet  to  hunt  the  buffalo  over  a  broken  country 
when,  without  the  tonic  of  the  chase,  he  could 
scarcely  sit  upright  in  the  saddle,  was  not  strictly 
necessary  for  maintaining  the  requisite  prestige. 


148  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

The  sport,  however,  was  good,  and  the  faith  un- 
doubting  that,  to  tame  the  devil,  it  is  best  to  take 
him  by  the  horns." 

Beside  the  personal  knowledge  of  the  Indian 
gained  by  these  heroic  means,  Parkman  brought 
back  with  him  from  the  West  a  shattered  consti 
tution.  But  as  he  dealt  with  his  difficulties  among 
the  Indians,  so  he  dealt  with  their  results  through 
out  his  life.  It  was  his  purpose  to  tell  the  world 
the  things  he  knew  and  meant  to  learn,  and  "  reel 
ing  in  the  saddle  with  weakness  and  pain,"  he 
proceeded  to  do  it.  In  1849  The  ®reg°n  Trail,, 
written  originally  as  a  series  of  papers  for  the 
Knickerbocker  Magazine,  appeared  as  a  book.  In 
1848,  when  his  disorders  seemed  at  their  worst, 
the  light  of  day  being  unsupportable  to  his  eyes, 
and  his  brain  driven  to  a  "  wild  whirl "  by  any  con 
tinued  mental  effort,  he  resolved  to  begin  work 
upon  the  History  of  the  Conspiracy  of  Pontiac.  The 
physicians  practically  told  him  that  it  was  madness, 
and  he,  rightly  believing  that  his  salvation  lay  in 
effort,  gave  them  no  heed.  When  he  began  his 
work  he  could  not  listen  for  more  than  half  an 
hour  at  a  time,  to  the  reading  of  the  material  he 
had  long  been  collecting,  and  there  were  many  days 
when  nothing  could  be  done.  He  made  his  notes 
with  closed  eyes  upon  an  apparatus  like  Prescott's 
noctograph,  except  that  it  had  no  carbonated  paper, 
and  the  writing  was  done  directly  upon  the  white 


Copyright,  1897,  by  Little,  Brown  &  Co. 


y 


From  an  engraving  of  a  photograph  taken  in  1882. 


THE   HISTORIANS  149 

sheet  with  a  pencil.  When  the  scrawls  were  de 
ciphered  and  read  to  him,  he  mastered  their  import 
and  dictated  his  narrative.  There  were  the  same 
perplexities  that  Prescott  had  to  encounter  with 
foreign  documents.  "  The  language  was  chiefly 
French,"  said  Parkman,  cc  and  the  reader  was  a  girl 
from  the  public  schools,  ignorant  of  any  tongue  but 
her  own.  The  effect,  though  highly  amusing  to 
bystanders,  was  far  from  being  so  to  the  person 
endeavouring  to  follow  the  meaning  of  this  strange 
jargon."  Yet  in  spite  of  everything  his  condition 
did  improve,  and  in  1851  the  book  was  published. 
Such  was  his  view  of  the  obstacles  he  always  had  to 
overcome  that  he  believed  the  results  of  his  work 
to  be  better  rather  than  worse  because  of  them. 

In  1851,  also,  there  was  a  new  disaster  in  an  effu 
sion  of  water  on  the  left  knee,  which  plunged  him 
into  miseries  of  body  and  mind  as  intense  as  any  he 
had  ever  known.  But  he  was  already  at  work  upon 
his  greater  enterprise,  the  series  of  histories  which 
now,  in  seven  volumes,  bear  the  general  title  of 
France  and  England  in  North  America.  It  was  four 
teen  years  before  the  first  of  these  was  finished.  In 
1865  appeared  The  Pioneers  of  France  in  the  New 
World.  There  had  been  many  interruptions,  one 
of  four  years,  and  others  of  lesser  duration,  from 
a  single  year  to  single  months,  weeks,  and  days. 
Meanwhile  he  had  married  and  lost  his  wife,  had 
journeyed  often  to  Europe  and  to  the  scenes  of  his 


CtreJZi    /«^v<£^: 


REDUCED  FAC-SIMILE  PAGE  OF  MANUSCRIPT  OF  PARKMAN'S  "  LA 
SALLE  AND  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  THE  GREAT  WEST,"  THE 
ONLY  BOOK  ENTIRELY  IN  HIS  HANDWRITING. 


THE   HISTORIANS  151 

narratives,  and  had  begun  to  collect  a  vast  num 
ber  of  original  documents  now  preserved  in  the 
rooms  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 
His  eyes  were  at  times  stronger,  so  that  he  could 
use  them,  reading  a  minute  and  resting  a  minute 
for  periods  of  half  an  hour,  repeated  several  times 
in  the  course  of  a  day.  Then,  again,  he  could  write 
for  a  season  with  his  own  hand  and  vision.  In 
1854  he  had  begun  to  spend  his  summers  at  a 
country  place  in  Jamaica  Plain.  Here,  unable  to 
use  his  eyes,  he  took  to  the  beneficent  work  of 
horticulture,  and  did  it  so  well  that  the  lilium  Park- 
manniy  the  result  of  his  experiments  in  hybridisation, 
perpetuates  his  name  as  the  creator  of  a  new  flower. 
At  various  times  he  was  President  of  the  Massa 
chusetts  Horticultural  Society,  a  professor  in  the 
agricultural  department  of  Harvard  University,  a 
member  of  the  highest  governing  boards  of  his  alma 
mater,  and  President  of  the  St.  Botolph  Club  in 
Boston.  But  much  as  he  loved  the  intercourse 
with  his  fellowmen,  he  had  to  limit  his  indulgence 
in  it.  The  work  of  his  life  was  the  completion  of 
his  historical  series,  and  this,  in  spite  of  all  the 
obstacles  that  would  have  seemed  insurmountable 
to  a  weaker  spirit,  he  achieved  in  the  year  before 
his  death,  on  November  8,  1893.  A  writer  who 
lived  only  to  begin  his  work,  Robert  Beverly  Hale, 
has  left  these  lines,  which  help  us  well  to  remember 
both  what  he  began  and  what  Parkman  finished : 


152  AMERICAN   BOOKMEN 

"With  youth* s  blue  sky  and  streaming  sunlight  blest, 
And  flushed  with  hope,  he  set  himself  to  trace 
The  fading  footprints  of  a  banished  race, 

Unmindful  of  the  storm-clouds  in  the  west. 

In  silent  pain  and  torments  unconfessed, 
Determination  written  on  his  face, 
He  struggled  on,  nor  faltered  in  his  pace 

Until  his  work  was  done  and  he  could  rest. 

"  He  was  no  frightened  paleface  stumbling  through 

An  unknown  forest,  wandering  round  and  round. 
Like  his  own  Indians,  with  instinct  fine 
He  knew  his  trail,  though  none  saw  how  he  knew, 

Reckoned  his  time,  and  reached  his  camping-ground 
Just  as  the  first  white  stars  began  to  shine. " 

In  that  Prescott  was  blessed  with  a  body  less 
compact  of  weakness  than  Parkman's,  and  with  a 
spirit  far  more  readily  schooled  to  discipline,  the 
record  of  his  achievements  may  be  read  in  later 
years  with  something  less  of  that  triumph  which 
every  man  feels  in  the  victory  of  another.  But  no 
historian  has  told  a  tale  capable  of  stirring  the  blood 
more  quickly  than  the  histories  to  be  read  between 
the  pages  of  these  two  "  friends  with  darkness." 


SOME  HUMOURISTS 

THERE  are  few  writings  concerned  with  wit 
and  humour  which  do  not  begin  with  elabo 
rate  definitions  of  these  almost  indefinable  qualities. 
The  present  writing  will  increase  the  number  of 
exceptions  to  this  rule  by  one.  If  there  be  readers 
who  cannot  satisfy  themselves  with  their  own  defini 
tions,  they  need  not  look  far  to  find  the  whole  mat 
ter  —  even  to  the  recognition  of  that  third  quality, 
a  sense  of  humour  —  set  forth  in  a  score  of  different 
ways.  Lowell's  opinion  on  the  subject  should  cer 
tainly  be  worth  more  than  most  men's,  and  he  once 
wrote,  "  My  idea  of  the  distinction  between  wit  and 
humour  is  that  wit  makes  others  laugh,  and  humour 
ourselves  cry  sometimes."  The  lecturer  to  a  col 
lege  class  who  quoted  the  definition  of  humour  as 
"  wit  plus  sympathy  "  provided  at  least  one  of  his 
hearers,  some  years  ago,  with  a  practical  working 
distinction  for  every-day  use.  But  there  are  many 
others,  often  subtler,  to  be  picked  up  in  places 
where  more  potent  appeals  to  the  memory  are 
made  than  in  college  class-rooms.  Whether  we 
consciously  divide  the  things  that  amuse  us  into 


154  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

the  witty  and  the  humourous  sallies  of  mankind,  we 
are  grateful  for  the  provocations  to  mirth,  and  enter 
tain  toward  the  man  who  gives  us  laughter  a  feeling 
which  separates  him  from  the  common  throng. 

The  attempts  to  formulate  the  distinctions  be 
tween  American  humour  and  that  of  other  lands 
are  almost  as  frequent  as  the  definitions  of  humour 
itself.  Again  it  seems  unnecessary  here  to  add  one 
to  these  attempts.  We  all  know  reasonably  well 
how  composite  and  yet  how  definite  are  the  qualities 
which  render  most  Americans  recognisable  wher 
ever  they  may  be  found  ;  and  like  them,  to  a  degree 
equally  exclusive  of  doubt,  is  the  quality  of  humour 
which  the  world  knows  as  American.  Mr.  T.  W. 
Higginson  has  said  "that  the  whole  department  of 
American  humour  was  created,  so  to  speak,  by  the 
amazed  curiosity  of  Englishmen."  It  would  be 
unfair  to  take  this  statement  entirely  apart  from  its 
context,  and  adorn  a  tale  of  confusion  between 
cause  and  effect  by  means  of  it.  Yet  whatever  one 
may  think  of  it,  or  of  the  taste  and  spirit  of  much 
American  humour,  it  would  be  foolish  to  forget 
that,  in  the  department  of  letters  to  which  it  belongs, 
our  fellow-countrymen  have  done  that  which  gives 
them  their  clearest  title  to  a  place  of  their  own  as 
writers. 

Much  of  the  best  achievement  in  this  direction 
has  obviously  been  wrought  by  men  whose  fame  is 
secured  by  other  gifts  than  those  of  mere  humour. 


SOME    HUMOURISTS  155 

It  is  necessary  only  to  recall  such  names  as  Franklin, 
Irving,  Lowell,  Holmes,  Warner,  Curtis,  Mitchell, 
and  Bret  Harte,  and  we  remember  how  much  besides 
being  humourists  some  of  our  best  humourists  have 
been  and  are.  It  is  noteworthy  also  that  the  names 
of  women  occupy  a  scanty  place  in  the  annals  of 
our  humour.  In  other  fields  they  may  be  counted 
now  by  hundreds,  but  excepting  some  short  stories 
here  and  there,  and  the  work  of  a  few  women  like 
"  Josiah  Allen's  Wife  "  and  the  «  Widow  Bedott," 
our  humourous  writing  has  been  done  almost  entirely 
by  men.  To  be  sure,  there  is  an  American  volume, 
The  Wit  of  Women,  compiled  by  one  of  their  sisters, 
who  with  a  feminine  argument  of  her  own  brings  it 
to  an  end  with  these  lines : 

"If  you  pronounce  this  book  not  funny 
And  wish  you  hadn't  spent  your  money, 
There  soon  will  be  a  general  rumour 
That  you  're  no  judge  of  Wit  and  Humour." 

But  even  this  argumentum  ad  hominem  fails  to  con 
vince.  Mark  Twain,  happily  still  the  living  expo 
nent  of  American  humour  in  its  essence,  addressed 
the  readers  of  his  Library  of  Humour,  published 
more  than  ten  years  ago,  in  a  different  fashion. 
Nothing  could  have  been  more  characteristic  of 
him  and  of  the  variety  of  humour  which  he  repre 
sents  than  his  "  Compiler's  Apology,"  printed  in 
facsimile  from  his  handwriting :  "  Those  selections 


156  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

in  this  book  which  are  from  my  own  works  were 
made  by  my  two  assistant-compilers,  not  by  me. 
This  is  why  there  are  not  more." 

But  living  writers  are  not  the  present  theme,  nor 
those  whose  names  derive  a  lustre  from  more 
serious  work.  Still  less  is  it  intended  to  attempt  a 
discussion  of  the  broad  theme  of  American  humour 
in  its  ethnic  and  philosophic  bearing.  Perhaps  the 
reader  will  not  unwillingly  join  in  the  preference  to 
look  at  a  few  of  the  typical  creators  and  creations  of 
our  native  humour.  Two  facts  he  will  recognise 
at  once :  First,  that  the  newspapers  have  been  an 
important  medium  of  humourous  expression  —  in 
part  because  our  humourists  have  dealt  frequently 
with  public  affairs,  and  in  part  because  the  news 
papers  have  mirrored  nearly  everything,  good  and 
bad,  that  is  representative  of  American  life ;  and, 
second,  that  an  amusing,  fictitious  personality,  some 
thing  more  than  a  mere  name,  has  frequently  been 
created  as  the  mouthpiece  of  a  humourous  writer. 
When  Lowell  began  writing  his  most  effective  polit 
ical  satires,  he  sent  them  to  the  editors  of  the  Boston 
Courier  and  the  Anti-Slavery  Standard^  and  a  flesh- 
and-blood  Hosea  Biglow  loomed  large  behind  his 
utterances.  Herein  Lowell,  with  his  own  skill  and 
power,  was  merely  elaborating,  in  the  forties,  a 
device  which  in  the  thirties  had  made  the  name  of 
Major  Jack  Downing  a  household  word.  In  the 
same  decade,  but  a  few  years  after  the  appearance 


SOME   HUMOURISTS 


'57 


of  Major  Downing,  the  first  lines  in   the   typical 
Yankee  figure  of  Sam  Slick  had  been  drawn  by  the 


Frontispiece  from  "  The  Life  and  Writings  of  Major  Jack 
Downing.1'      Boston,  1833. 


Canadian  pen  of  Judge  Haliburton ;  but  the  down- 
east  Major  was  the  first  conspicuous  figure  in 
this  field  of  New-World  letters,  and  as  the  proto- 


158  AMERICAN   BOOKMEN 

type  of  later  creations  deserves  more  than  a  passing 
glance. 

One  is  confused  at  first  by  finding  the  origin  of 
the  collected  Downing  letters  attributed  to  two 
persons,  Seba  Smith,  a  Maine  journalist,  and 
Charles  Augustus  Davis  (1795-1867),  a  New 
York  shipping  merchant.  The  truth  appears  to  be 
that  Smith  created  the  Downingville  major,  and 
Davis  adopted  him  as  his  own  offspring.  In 
neither  of  the  volumes  in  which  the  letters  of 
Major  Jack  Downing  were  first  collected  does  the 
name  of  their  real  author  appear,  but  the  evidence 
from  various  sources  goes  to  show  that  the  Boston 
volume  of  1833,  made  up  of  letters  to  the  Portland 
Courier,  was  wholly  the  work  of  Smith,  and  the 
New  York  volume  of  1834,  made  up  of  letters  to 
the  New  York  Daily  Advertiser,  wholly  that  of 
Davis.  Before  the  first  collection  was  printed, 
some  of  the  New  York  letters  had  appeared,  for 
an  appendix  to  the  Boston  volume,  declaring  that 
"  the  real  Major  has  never  sent  any  letter  to  any 
other  paper  than  the  Portland  Courier"  proceeds 
to  print  "some  of  Major  Jack  Downing' s  letters, 
that  he  never  wrote,"  and  these  are  identical  with 
letters  addressed  to  the  New  York  Daily  Advertiser, 
and  collected  in  the  volume  attributed  to  Davis. 
Any  possible  doubt  that  Seba  Smith  was  the  author 
of  the  first  volume  is  removed  by  the  book  My 
Thirty  Tears  Out  of  the  Senate  (New  York,  1859), 


SOME    HUMOURISTS  159 

appearing  over  his  own  name,  and  republishing  the 
letters  contained  in  the  Boston  volume  of  1833. 
It  is  not  unnatural  to  resent  in  some  measure  the 
credit  which  Davis  won  for  himself,  abroad  and 
among  his  friends, — of  whom  Irving  was  one  and 
Halleck  another,  —  by  the  cleverness  of  his  letters, 
and  their  superiority,  according  to  some  opinions, 
to  those  of  Smith ;  for  in  spite  of  it  all  he  was 
clearly  a  trespasser  on  another  man's  ground.  If 
he  had  confined  himself  to  newspapers  he  would 
have  been  merely  one  of  many  imitators.  Even 
the  father  of  Motley,  the  historian,  as  Dr.  Holmes 
tells  us,  was  "  the  author  of  one  or  more  of  the 
well-remembered  <  Jack  Downing '  letters." 

The  ethics  and  bibliography  of  the  letters,  how 
ever,  are  less  important  than  the  Major  and  the 
letters  themselves.  In  his  volume  of  1859  Seba 
Smith  tells  how  they  first  came  to  be  written. 
From  other  sources  we  learn  that  Smith  was  born 
in  Buckfield,  Maine,  on  September  14,  1792,  was 
graduated  from  Bowdoin  College  in  1818,  and  in 
1820  became  the  editor  of  the  Eastern  Argus  in 
Portland.  From  1830  until  1837  he  conducted  the 
Portland  Courier,  and  it  was  in  1830,  according  to 
his  own  story,  that  he  began  writing  for  its  columns 
the  Downing  letters.  The  Maine  Legislature, 
evenly  balanced  in  politics,  afforded  a  good  target 
for  ridicule,  and  it  seemed  possible  by  the  exercise 
of  it  to  profit  the  young  and  struggling  Courier. 


160  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

Accordingly  Seba  Smith  "bethought  himself  of  the 
plan  to  bring  a  green,  unsophisticated  lad  from  the 
country  into  town  with  a  load  of  axe-handles,  hoop- 
poles,  and  other  notions  for  sale,  and  while  waiting 
the  movement  of  a  dull  market,  let  him  blunder 
into  the  halls  of  the  legislature,  and  after  wit 
nessing  for  some  days  their  strange  doings, 
sit  down  and  write  an  account  of  them  to  his 
friends  at  home  in  his  own  plain  language."  From 
the  beginning  the  letters  were  a  success,  not 
only  with  Maine  readers,  but  in  Boston  and  other 
places  where  the  newspapers  copied  them  freely. 
With  their  progress  the  Yankee  correspondent 
advanced  in  importance.  From  his  native  town  of 
Downingville,  "  three  miles  from  the  main  road  as 
you  go  back  into  the  country,  and  .  .  .  jest  about 
in  the  middle  of  down  East"  he  proceeded  to  Wash 
ington,  where  he  soon  became  an  intimate  friend 
and  confidential  adviser  of  President  Jackson.  He 
represents  himself  even  as  "  the  Gineral's  "  bedfel 
low,  and  none  of  cc  Old  Hickory's  "  actions  is  too 
important  or  too  trivial  for  Major  Downing  to  have 
a  hand  in  it.  The  possibilities  of  giving  the  ways 
of  the  Administration  a  ridiculous  aspect  by  this 
method  need  merely  to  be  suggested.  From  Seba 
Smith's  book  it  is  worth  while  to  transcribe  some 
words  about  the  memorable  visit  to  Cambridge 
when  the  degree  of  LL.D.  was  conferred  upon 
Jackson,  for  they  represent  with  sufficient  clearness 


SOME    HUMOURISTS  161 

the  vein  of  humour  that  was  characteristic  both  of 
the  original  Jack  Downing,  who  is  reported  to  have 
known  himself  only  by  the  scar  on  his  left  arm,  and 
of  his  principal  rival. 

"Ye  see  when  we  were  at  Boston  they  sent  word 
to  us  to  come  out  to  Cambridge,  for  they  wanted  to 
make  the  President  a  doctor  of  laws.  What  upon 
airth  a  doctor  of  laws  was,  or  why  they  wanted  to 
make  the  President  one,  I  could  n't  think.  So 
when  we  come  to  go  up  to  bed  I  asked  the  Gineral 
about  it.  And  says  I,  c  Gineral,  what  is  it  they 
want  to  do  to  you  out  to  Cambridge  ? '  Says 
he,  c  They  want  to  make  a  doctor  of  laws  of  me/ 
'  Well,*  says  I,  c  but  what  good  will  that  do  P ' 
c  Why/  says  he,  cyou  know,  Major  Downing, 
there  's  a  pesky  many  of  them  are  laws  passed  by 
Congress  that  are  rickety  things.  Some  of  'em 
have  very  poor  constitutions,  and  some  of  'em 
have  n't  no  constitution  at  all.  So  that  it  is  neces 
sary  to  have  somebody  there  to  doctor  'em  up  a 
little,  and  not  let  'em  go  out  into  the  world,  where 
they  would  stand  a  chance  to  catch  cold  and  be 
sick,  without  they  had  good  constitutions  to  bear 
it.  You  know,'  says  he,  c  I  've  had  to  doctor  the 
laws  considerable  ever  since  I  've  been  at  Washing 
ton,  although  I  was  n't  a  regular  bred  doctor.  And 
I  made  out  so  well  about  it,  that  these  Cambridge 
folks  think  I  better  be  made  into  a  regular  doctor  at 
once,  and  then  there  '11  be  no  grumbling  and  disput- 


ii 


162  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

ing  about  my  practice/  Says  he,  (  Major,  what  do 
you  think  of  it  ? '  I  told  him  I  thought  it  an  excel 
lent  plan ;  and  asked  him  if  he  did  n't  think  they 
would  be  willing,  bein'  I  'd  been  round  in  the  mili 
tary  business  considerable  for  a  year  or  two  past,  to 
make  me  a  doctor  of  war.  He  said  he  did  n't  know, 
but  he  thought  it  would  be  no  harm  to  try  'em." 

There  are  passages,  both  in  Smith's  letters  and  in 
Davis's,  more  broadly  humourous  and  perhaps 
more  conspicuously  Yankee ;  yet  it  is  evident  that 
to  the  first  Jack  Downing,  as  the  principal  pioneer 
in  a  territory  which  has  since  been  widely  cultivated, 
all  credit  is  due.  In  1837,  Seba  Smith  sold  the 
Courier,  and  moved  soon  afterwards  to  New  York, 
where  for  many  years  he  went  on  with  the  exercise 
of  his  pen,  not  only  in  Downing  letters,  but  in  pro 
ducing  Powhatan :  A  Metrical  Historical  Romance, 
a  treatise  on  geometry  and  other  labours  more 
strictly  journalistic.  Of  his  wife,  Elizabeth  Oakes 
Smith,  the  author  of  The  Sinless  Child,  a  poem 
which  in  spite  of  its  length  called  forth  praise  from 
Poe,  Griswold  bears  record  that  "  from  her  earliest 
years  she  has  delighted  in  the  study  of  philosophy, 
in  abstruse  speculations,  and  curious  science."  The 
Downing  letters  and  a  treatise  on  geometry  —  The 
Sinless  Child  and  "  abstruse  speculations  "  —  surely 
the  mental  range  of  Seba  Smith  and  his  wife  was 
not  confined  within  narrow  bounds.  He  died  in 
Patchogue,  Long  Island,  on  July  29,  1868. 


SOME    HUMOURISTS  163 

According  to  a  reported  declaration  of  Artemus 
Ward,  Major  Jack  Downing  was  his  pattern.  It  is 
not  difficult  of  belief,  for  in  the  use  to  which  they 
put  the  Yankee  vernacular,  in  their  assumed  familiar 
ity  with  conspicuous  persons,  and  in  the  "  free-born- 
American-citizen  "  attitude  of  each  writer  there  is 
much  that  suggests  a  family  relationship.  Artemus 
Ward  —  as  the  man  whose  real  name  was  Charles 
Farrar  Browne  is  more  familiarly  called  —  may  be 
regarded  as  typical  of  the  entire  class  of  humourous 
journalists  and  speakers  who  have  followed  him. 
Certainly  he  has  not  been  denied  the  homage  of 
imitation,  and  certainly  the  writings  he  has  left 
behind  him  are  enough  more  than  mere  "  comic 
copy "  to  give  him  his  place  as  a  representative 
figure.  Lowell  told  the  truth  about  one  of  the 
humourous  methods  in  which  Artemus  Ward 
excelled  when  he  said :  "  There  is  no  fun  in  bad 
spelling  of  itself,  but  only  where  the  misspelling 
suggests  something  else  that  is  droll  per  se."  It  is 
the  merit  of  Artemus  Ward's  verbal  vagaries  —  for 
example,  when  a  friend  sends  him  a  copy  of 
"  Chawcer's  poems,"  and  he  says,  "  Mr.  C.  had 
talent,  but  he  could  n't  spel "  —  that  the  droll  per 
sonality  of  Charles  Farrar  Browne's  creation  is 
always  realised  more  clearly  by  reason  of  what  may 
be  called  his  mental  dialect. 

If  Artemus  Ward's  descent  as  a  humourist  is  to 
be  traced  from  Major  Jack  Downing,  it  is  thus  that 


1 64  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

he  accounts  from  the  Browns,  as  the  family  name 
was  written  before  he  himself  adopted  the  final  e : 
"  I  should  think  we  came  from  Jerusalem,  for  my 
father's  name  was  Levi,  and  we  had  a  Nathan  and 
a  Moses  in  the  family.  But  my  poor  brother's 
name  was  Cyrus,  so  perhaps  that  makes  us  Per 
sians."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Browns  came  to 
Maine  from  Massachusetts  in  1783,  and  on  April 
26,  1834,  the  humourist  was  born  in  the  village  of 
Waterford.  He  was  one  of  four  children,  and, 
unlike  many  men  who  have  made  a  mark  in  the 
world,  could  not  have  regarded  his  mother  as  the 
source  of  his  peculiar  distinction.  She  is  described 
as  the  fondest  of  parents,  but  a  person  entirely 
lacking  in  humour  and  the  sense  of  it.  It  is  re 
lated  that  when  she  first  heard  her  son  lecture  in 
Boston,  she  was  startled  and  irritated  exceedingly 
by  hearing  him  vouch  for  one  of  his  statements  by 
the  use  of  a  real  name  and  a  real  formula  which  had 
frequently  fallen  from  her  own  lips,  and  was  intro 
duced  into  the  lecture  entirely  for  her  benefit :  "  I 
know  it 's  true,  for  my  Uncle  Ransford  Bates  said 
so."  The  youthful  antics  ascribed  to  her  son  must 
have  been  equally  trying  to  the  good  woman,  and 
yet  the  devotion  which  he  cherished  for  her  through 
life  helps  one  to  realise  what  it  must  have  meant  to 
her  to  let  the  boy,  only  thirteen  years  old  when  his 
father  died,  go  out  into  the  world  almost  immedi 
ately  to  make  his  living  in  printing-offices.  He 


SOME    HUMOURISTS  165 

was  but  fifteen  when,  after  four  experiments  under 
country  editors  in  New  Hampshire  and  Maine,  he 
found  himself  in  the  Boston  printing  house  from 
which  B.  P.  Shillaber's  (Mrs.  Partington's)  comic 
paper,  The  Carpet  Bag,  was  issued.  Setting  up  the 
type  of  Mrs.  Partington's  paragraphs  and  of  J.  G. 
Saxe's  witty  verses,  he  ventured  to  write  jokes  him 
self,  and  had  the  felicity  of  seeing  them  printed. 

A  roving  disposition  carried  him,  soon  after  this 
humble  beginning  of  a  journalistic  career,  to  Tiffin, 
Ohio.  This  was  in  1856,  and  before  1860  he  had 
won  his  spurs  in  Toledo  and  Cleveland,  where  the 
editor  of  the  Plaindealer^  hearing  the  fame  of  his 
wit,  secured  him  as  local  editor  at  the  salary  of 
twelve,  afterward  advanced  to  fifteen  dollars  a  week. 
At  this  post  he  remained  three  years.  His  Cleve 
land  associates  have  since  recalled  him  as  a  youth 
of  surpassing  awkwardness  and  rusticity  at  first,  but 
developing  by  degrees  a  regard  for  his  personal 
appearance  which  brought  him  later  to  an  ill-advised 
fondness  for  diamonds  and  curled  hair.  But  there 
is  ample  evidence  in  this  period  also  of  his  more 
essential  graces  and  virtues.  Generous,  companion 
able,  and  trusting,  laughing  over  his  work,  serious 
withal,  sometimes  to  the  degree  of  mental  suffering, 
given  to  ways  eccentric  and  unconventional,  he 
seems  to  have  fallen  in  with  the  mode  of  journalistic 
life  which  needs  but  does  not  always  receive  the 
help  of  native  qualities  like  Browne's  to  make  it 


166  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

alluring.  There  are  innumerable  stories  of  his 
practical  jokes,  but  one  will  suffice  to  indicate  their 
audacity.  One  night  with  a  fellow  wag  in  journal 
ism  known  as  "  the  Fat  Contributor/'  he  went  to 
the  hotel  where  a  dramatic  reader,  who  was  to  give 
his  first  entertainment  in  the  place  the  next  day, 
was  stopping.  They  called  him  from  his  bed,  told 
him  they  were  newspaper  men,  and  would  ruin  his 
prospects  unless  he  should  come  with  them  as  he 
was  to  the  hall  near  by,  and  show  what  he  could  do 
as  a  reader.  The  poor  man  protested,  but  their 
threats  were  too  much  for  his  courage,  and  shiver 
ing  with  cold,  he  went  with  them  to  the  dreary, 
unheated  hall,  and,  if  the  story  be  true,  entertained 
them  for  several  hours  with  his  selections.  "  They 
had  always  thirsted  to  hear  a  dramatic  reader  in 
night  dress,"  they  told  him ;  and  if  they  did  not 
commend  his  more  decorous  performance  in  public, 
their  rather  heartless  idea  of  humour  must  have 
profited  the  unhappy  reader  but  little. 

It  was  in  Cleveland  that  Browne  began  signing 
the  name  of  Artemus  Ward  to  his  productions. 
The  most  credible  theory  of  the  source  of  this  nom 
de  plume  is  that  the  veritable  nom  de  guerre  of 
General  Artemas  Ward  of  the  Revolutionary  army 
appealed  to  the  humourist,  who  adopted  it  with  the 
change  of  a  single  letter.  By  degrees  the  new 
Artemus  Ward  became  a  definite  character,  a  show 
man  who  could  write  of  his  equipment : 


From  an  engraving  of  a  Daguerreotype  by  H.  W.  Smith,  1853, 


or  THX 

UNIVERSITY 


SOME    HUMOURISTS  167 

"  My  show  at  present  consists  of  three  moral 
bares,  a  Kangaroo  (a  amoozin'  little  Raskal  — 
'twould  make  you  larf  yerself  to  deth  to  see  the 
little  cuss  jump  up  and  squeal),  wax  figgers  of  G. 
Washington,  Gen.  Tayler,  John  Bunyan,  Capt. 
Kidd  and  Dr.  Webster  in  the  act  of  killin'  Dr. 
Parkman,  besides  several  miscellanyus  moral  wax 
statoots  of  celebrated  piruts  &  murderers,  &c., 
ekalled  by  few  &  exceld  by  none." 

It  was  in  Cleveland,  too,  that  Browne  first  con 
ceived  the  idea  of  becoming  a  public  lecturer.  But 
that  was  not  to  be  until  after  he  went,  in  1860,  to 
live  in  New  York,  as  editor  of  the  promising  comic 
journal,  Vanity  Fair,  and  one  of  the  Bohemian  set 
which  frequented  Pfaff's,  and  presented  to  Mr. 
Howells,  picking  up  his  first  impressions  of  Eastern 
writers,  a  notable  contrast  to  the  group  of  men  he 
had  just  left  in  Boston. 

On  a  desperately  stormy  night,  near  the  end  of 
1 86 1,  Browne  first  faced  a  New  York  audience  as  a 
public  speaker,  and  suffered  a  loss  of  thirty  dollars ; 
but  he  had  already  tried  his  lecture,  on  "  The  Babes 
in  the  Wood,"  in  Norwich,  Connecticut,  and  other 
towns.  It  was  a  peculiarity  of  Ward's  lectures  that 
they  had  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  the  subject 
announced.  He  would  begin  with  a  mention  of  it, 
then  ask  the  audience  to  let  him  tell  them  a  little 
story,  which  would  wander  on  into  irrelevant  witti 
cisms  occupying  about  an  hour  and  a  half,  when  he 


i68  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

would  take  out  his  watch,  appear  to  be  overcome 
with  shame  and  confusion,  and  bring  his  talk  to  a 
hurried,  apologetic  end.  In  Norwich  the  good 
people,  who  had  laughed  immoderately  at  his  jokes, 
crowded  around  him  when  the  lecture  was  finished 
to  express  sympathy  for  the  nervousness  through 
which,  as  they  supposed,  he  had  failed  to  say  any 
thing  at  all  about  the  Babes  in  the  Wood.  He 
himself  modestly  told  a  different  story,  at  the  break 
fast-table  of  James  T.  Fields,  when  he  said  of  his 
first  audiences  :  "  I  was  prepared  for  a  good  deal  of 
gloom,  but  I  had  no  idea  they  would  be  so  much 
depressed."  "  Artemus  Ward  will  Speak  a  Piece  " 
was  the  sum  and  substance  of  the  advertising 
placard  which  announced  his  appearance  in  various 
places.  Even  the  tickets  were  whimsical  and 
characteristic.  For  one  of  his  most  popular  lectures 
the  card  of  admission  read  :  "  Artemus  Ward  among 
the  Mormons.  Admit  the  Bearer  and  One  Wife." 
The  programmes  were  not  without  their  individual 
ity.  In  London  they  were  enriched  with  the  note, 
"  Mr.  ARTEMUS  WARD  will  call  on  the  citizens  of 
London  at  their  residences,  and  explain  any  jokes 
in  his  narrative  which  they  may  not  understand." 
There  may  have  been  reason  enough  in  such  an 
offer  if  John  Bright  was  reported  with  even  an 
approach  to  truth  in  saying :  "  I  must  say  I  can't 
see  what  people  find  to  enjoy  in  this  lecture. 
The  information  is  meagre  and  is  presented  in 


From  a  photograph  by  George  M.  Baker,  Boston,  1870. 


SOME    HUMOURISTS  169 

a  desultory,  disconnected  manner.  In  fact,  I 
can't  help  seriously  questioning  some  of  the  state 
ments." 

Probably  enough  has  been  said  to  show  that 
Artemus  Ward  stood  entirely  alone  among  the  lect 
urers  who  galled  one  another's  kibes  on  the  lyceum 
platforms  of  his  day.  Of  the  sober  entertainments 
which  they  provided  Ward  said :  "  The  men  go 
becauz  its  poplar  and  the  wimin  folks  to  see  what 
other  wimin  folks  have  on."  To  his  lectures  they 
went  solely  to  be  amused,  and  as  their  success  be 
came  rapidly  known,  he  soon  found  that  he  had 
done  well  to  abandon  journalism.  East  and  West 
his  "  show "  was  in  demand.  A  San  Francisco 
manager  telegraphed  him,  "  What  will  you  take  for 
forty  nights  in  California  ? "  and  his  immediate 
response,  "  Brandy  and  water,"  so  tickled  the  West 
ern  humour  that  when  he  came  to  Virginia  City  the 
miners  took  charge  of  the  entertainment,  would 
have  no  tickets  sold,  but  invited  everybody,  and 
collected  sixteen  hundred  dollars  in  gold  for  the 
lecturer  by  passing  round  hats,  one  of  which  broke 
with  the  weight  of  its  contents.  Brigham  Young 
received  him  cordially  in  Salt  Lake  City,  in  spite 
of  the  jests  he  had  made  and  was  still  to  make 
about  the  sect  of  men  whose  "  religion  is  singular, 
but  their  wives  are  plural."  There  was  little  of 
appreciation  left  for  him  to  win  from  his  own 
countrymen,  at  least  of  those  who  "  liked  that  sort 


i7.o  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

of  thing,"  when  in   1866  he  determined  to  try  the 
fortunes  of  his  wit  in  London. 

Mr.  Higginson's  phrase,  "  the  amazed  curiosity 
of  Englishmen,"  well  describes  the  state  of  mind 
which  Artemus  Ward  excited  in  the  mother  coun 
try.  There  could  not  have  been  many  John  Brights 
in  the  audiences  which  thronged  Egyptian  Hall 
for  the  six  weeks  before  his  failing  health  made 
the  seventh  his  last  week  of  public  appearance. 
The  abashed  manner  of  the  lecturer,  his  personal 
peculiarities  of  which  he  himself  made  fun,  the  diffi 
culties  with  his  panorama,  which  in  general  was 
painted  as  badly  as  possible,  because  excellence  was 
expensive,  the  eccentricities  of  the  moon  and  the 
prairie  fires,  which  would  shoot  up  and  flare  out  at 
the  wrong  moments,  to  the  apparent  consternation 
of  the  lecturer,  —  all  these,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
humour  of  his  talks,  are  reported  to  have  kept  his 
hearers  in  a  frenzy  of  laughter.  Who  can  wonder 
that  they  were  quite  overcome  by  the  gravity  with 
which  he  would  point  to  dark  regions  in  his  canvas 
and  say :  "  These  are  intended  for  horses ;  I  know 
they  are,  because  the  artist  told  me  so.  After  two 
years  he  came  to  me  one  morning  and  said,  c  Mr. 
Ward,  I  cannot  conceal  it  from  you  any  longer ; 
they  are  horses/  '  It  was  in  the  full  tide  of  suc 
cess,  achieved  simply  by  the  exercise  of  natural  gifts, 
that  his  career  of  unique  popularity  was  cut  short. 
His  contributions  to  Punch  had  won  him  a  place  on 


SAXE  AT   32. 
From  a  sketch  made  in  England. 


OF  TUB 

UNIVERSITY 


SOME   HUMOURISTS  171 

the  staff  of  the  paper,  and  all  things  indicated  the 
continuance  of  success.  But  the  cough  which  had 
made  nearly  all  his  lecturing  in  London  difficult 
stopped  it  entirely.  His  friends  took  him  to  the 
island  of  Jersey,  in  the  hope  that  its  milder  air 
might  restore  him.  Then  they  tried  to  bring  him 
back  to  London,  but  he  could  not  bear  the  journey 
beyond  Southampton,  where  he  died  early  in  1867, 
not  quite  thirty-three  years  old. 

It  may  be  thought  that  an  inordinate  space  has 
been  devoted  to  a  person  who  stood  related  to  lit 
erature  as  bouffe  to  grand  opera.  Yet  Artemus 
Ward  represented  conspicuously  a  class  of  writers 
which  must  not  be  overlooked  in  any  general 
survey  of  American  letters.  Indeed,  it  would 
not  be  unprofitable  to  scrutinise  the  career  and 
work  of  other  men  who  stood  less  upon  the  dig 
nity  than  the  drollery  of  their  productions  ;  for  if 
their  appeal  has  not  always  been  to  the  most  fas 
tidious,  they  have  often  meant  more  to  "  the  great 
body  of  the  plain  people  "  than  graver  bookmen  who 
escape  the  humourist's  penalty  of  writing,  as  a  rule, 
for  one  generation  or  decade.  The  mere  names  of 
these  men,  dead  and  living,  would  make  a  catalogue 
of  no  scanty  length.  "John  Phoenix,"  "Orpheus 
C.  Kerr  "  (Office  Seeker),  "  Petroleum  V.  Nasby  " 
would  stand  among  the  better  known.  B.  P.  Shil- 
laber  (1814-90),  a  Boston  journalist,  —  who  took 
his  cue  and  his  pseudonym  from  Sydney  Smith's 


172 


AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 


reference  in  a  political  speech  to  a  certain  Mrs.  Par- 
tington's  vain  endeavour  to  mop  up   the  Atlantic 


FAC-SIMILE  OF  A  LETTER    FROM   JOHN  G.  SAXE    REPLYING  TO  A 
REQUEST  FOR  AN  AUTOGRAPH. 

Ocean,  and  made  a  new  Mrs.  Malaprop  of  his  talk 
ative  old  heroine,  —  would  claim  especial  attention. 


SOME    HUMOURISTS  173 

So,  too,  would  Henry  W.  Shaw  (1818-85),  who 
after  encountering  every  experience  as  a  Western 
pioneer  began  writing  at  forty-five,  and  over  the 
name  of  "  Josh  Billings "  put  forth  many  witty, 
homely  maxims,  of  which,  perhaps,  none  is  more 
memorable  than  that  "  it  iz  better  to  kno  less,  than 
to  kno  so  mutch  that  aint  so." 

Apart  from  these  newspaper  celebrities  stands 
one  of  whom  Mr.  Stedman  has  written  :  "  For  the 
most  part  he  was  a  popular  specimen  of  the  college- 
society,  lecture-room,  dinner-table  rhymester  that 
may  be  set  down  as  a  peculiarly  American  type  and 
of  a  generation  now  almost  passed  away."  John 
Godfrey  Saxe  dealt  less  in  humour  than  in  clear-cut 
wit.  The  mastery  of  words  in  rhymes  which  Richard 
H.  Barham  or  Tom  Hood  might  often  have  been 
willing  to  own  gave  him  his  distinction.  Like  many 
of  those  who  have  incited  our  countrymen  most  suc 
cessfully  to  mirth,  he  was  of  New  England  origin  and 
training.  Born  in  Highgate,  Vermont,  on  June  2, 
1816,  he  spent  his  boyhood  on  a  farm,  graduated  at 
Middlebury  College  in  1839,  anc^  began  the  practice 
of  law.  Until  he  was  twenty-five  he  wrote  little 
or  nothing,  and  then  the  Knickerbocker  Magazine 
printed  his  ballad  of  "  The  Briefless  Barrister," 
which  is  not  without  an  autobiographical  value : 

"  Unfortunate  man  that  I  am  ! 

I  've  never  a  client  but  grief; 
The  case  is,  I  've  no  case  at  all, 

And  in  brief,  I  've  ne'er  had  a  brief." 


174  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

Yet  with  a  mingling  of  law,  journalism,  and  politics 
he  went  on  with  his  Vermont  life  in  St.  Albans  and 
Burlington,  until,  twice  defeated  as  a  candidate  for 
governor  in  his  native  State,  he  moved  to  New 
York.  For  an  impression  of  his  personal  appear 
ance  we  may  look  again  to  his  verses : 

"  Now  I  am  a  man,  you  must  learn, 

Less  famous  for  beauty  than  strength, 
And  for  aught  I  could  ever  discern, 

Of  rather  superfluous  length. 
In  truth,  'tis  but  seldom  one  meets 

Such  a  Titan  in  human  abodes, 
And  when  I  walk  over  the  streets, 

I  'm  a  perfect  Colossus  of  roads." 

In  spite  of  this  account  of  himself,  his  personality 
was  really  most  attractive,  and,  with  his  skill  in 
speaking,  won  him  great  popularity  as  a  lecturer 
and  reader  of  his  own  verses.  In  1872  he  became 
associated  with  the  Albany  Evening  Journal,  and  in 
Albany  he  died  on  March  31,  1887.  The  last 
portion  of  his  life  affords  another  story  of  the 
sorrow  which  seems  especially  to  beset  the  sons  of 
laughter.  In  1874  he  narrowly  escaped  death  in  a 
railroad  accident  in  Virginia.  This  shock  was  soon 
followed  by  the  death,  in  rapid  succession,  of  his 
wife,  three  daughters,  and  a  son ;  and  the  result  of 
his  overwhelming  distress  was  that  he  became  the 
victim  of  attacks  of  melancholy,  which  caused  his 


SOME   HUMOURISTS  175 

complete  retirement  from  the  world.  It  was  indeed 
a  tragic  ending  for  the  life  of  the  light-hearted 
singer  of  "The  Proud  Miss  MacBride,"  "The 
New  Rape  of  the  Lock,"  and  scores  of  other  skil 
ful  rhymes  and  vers  de  societe,  which  were  the 
delight  of  his  generation. 

Of  men  about  whom  so  much  might  be  said  it 
is  difficult  to  say  so  little.  But  restraint  must  be 
exercised  still  further,  even  to  exclude  that  vast 
anonymous  expression  of  American  humour  which 
confronts  us  every  day  and  every  week  in  the 
periodical  press.  The  composite  person  who  pro 
duces  it  has  no  dates  of  birth  and  death  to  record, 
no  incidents  of  struggle  and  success  to  relate  ;  yet 
as  unmistakably  as  Bret  Harte,  Mark  Twain,  and 
the  many  others,  living  and  dead,  who  have  been 
mentioned  or  more  closely  regarded,  he  is  a  pro 
duct  of  our  curious  civilisation,  and,  so  far  as  one 
can  see,  will  continue  to  help  us  in  realising,  still 
without  the  need  of  definitions,  the  distinctive 
qualities  of  our  national  humour. 


EMERSON   AND    CONCORD 

WHEN  Dr.  Holmes  finished  his  Life  of 
Emerson  in  1884,  he  wrote  in  a  letter 
about  it :  "  The  truth  is  that  Emerson's  life  and 
writings  have  been  so  darned  over  by  biographers 
and  critics  that  a  new  hand  can  hardly  tell  his  own 
yarn  from  that  of  his  predecessors,  or  one  of  theirs 
from  another's."  Three  years  later  appeared  the 
more  complete  Memoirs  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson, 
by  James  Elliot  Cabot,  his  literary  executor,  and 
almost  incessantly  since  then  the  process  of  darn 
ing  and  re-darning  has  been  kept  up.  It  is  less 
with  the  hope,  therefore,  of  saying  new  things  than 
of  refreshing  the  memory  of  the  old  that  any 
attempt  to  consider  the  circumstances  of  Emerson's 
life  must  now  be  made.  The  teachings  of  his 
philosophy  may  receive  new  illumination  from  time 
to  time.  New  applications  of  it  to  new  problems 
will  doubtless  be  possible  for  many  years  to  come. 
The  story  of  his  living  told  itself,  and  it  is  enough 
if  somebody  will  merely  repeat  it  from  time  to 
time.  The  life  carried  its  own  interpretation,  and 
needs  no  commentator  to  point  out  either  the  seem- 


OF  THB 

TTNTVERSITT 


EMERSON   AND    CONCORD        177 

ing  unattainableness  of  some  of  its  standards  for 
common  flesh  and  blood,  or  the  lofty  value  of  its 
example  as  a  freed  life  of  intellect  and  spirit,  a 
breath  as  of  "winds,  austere  and  pure,"  in  the  thick 
air  of  a  workaday  world. 

There  are  two  ways  of  using  a  village  as  a  place 
to  live  in.  The  one  is  to  take  its  freedom  from  the 
engrossing  concerns  of  city  life  as  an  excuse  for 
falling  back  upon  the  pettinesses  of  a  small  commu 
nity  :  standing  thus  close  to  trivial  things  their  size 
is  magnified  out  of  all  proportion,  and  the  prospect 
of  larger  things  beyond  is  blotted  out.  The  other 
way  is  to  use  one's  freedom  for  seeing  things  both 
near  and  far  in  their  true  dimensions.  The  Massa 
chusetts  village  of  Concord,  for  a  considerable  part 
of  our  century,  has  been  a  place  where  the  practice 
of  this  second  method  was  to  be  found.  Any  vil 
lage  in  which  Emerson,  Hawthorne,  and  Thoreau, 
to  cite  its  greatest  names,  were  living  at  one  time 
must  have  been  such  a  place.  It  is  not  unnatural 
that  the  villagers  themselves  should  have  magnified 
the  importance  of  some  of  their  lesser  names.  When 
the  amusing  writer  who  made  it  his  task  to  de 
scribe  America  and  the  Americans  from  the  French 
point  of  view,  native  or  acquired,  was  taken  to 
Concord,  he  had  to  confess-  that  some  of  the  names 
with  which  he  was  expected  to  be  familiar  —  "  that 
of  a  man  named  Alcott,  for  example  "  —  were  quite 
unknown  to  him.  His  point  of  view  was  as  dis- 


178  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

tinctly  that  of  the  outside  world  as  Alcott's  own  out 
look  seems  to  have  been  parochial.  Emerson 
himself  told  the  story  of  having  asked  Alcott  one 
day  what  he  could  show  for  himself,  what  he  had 
really  done  to  justify  his  existence.  "  If  Pythag 
oras  came  to  Concord/'  was  the  triumphant  reply, 
"  whom  would  he  ask  to  see  ?  "  The  sage  was  safe 
enough  in  his  Socratic  retort,  but  in  spite  of 
parochial  illusions,  any  pilgrim  to  Concord  in  the 
days  of  its  distinction  must  have  recognised  it  as  a 
place  where  the  better  sort  of  village  life  was  eagerly 
lived,  and  must  have  known  that  men  and  not 
the  village  had  brought  him  on  his  pilgrimage. 

Of  all  the  men  of  thought  and  letters  who  con 
tributed  in  a  greater  and  less  degree  to  this  distinc 
tion  of  the  town,  Thoreau  was  the  only  one  who 
was  born  in  Concord.  Yet  Emerson,  by  every 
right  of  inheritance,  was  more  truly  its  son.  The 
town  was  founded  by  a  direct  ancestor,  the  Rev. 
Peter  Bulkeley,  who  came  to  America  in  1634. 
His  granddaughter  married  an  Emerson,  a  minister, 
who  died  in  Concord  in  1680;  and  his  grandson, 
William  Emerson,  the  minister  of  the  town  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Revolution  and  the  first  occupant 
of  the  "Old  Manse,"  was  the  grandfather  of  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson,  whose  father  was  another  Rev. 
William  Emerson,  minister  of  the  First  Church  in 
Boston.  Made  up  of  ministers  and  graduates  of 
Harvard  College,  the  race  was  eminently  of  the 


THOREAU  AT   37. 
From  an  engraving  of  the  crayon  drawing  by  Rowse. 


OF  THK 

TOIVERSITY 


EMERSON   AND    CONCORD        179 

sort  which  Dr.  Holmes  defined  as  academic.  Ralph 
Waldo,  born  in  Boston  on  May  25,  1803,  was  the 
fourth  of  eight  children.  Two  girls  and  a  boy  died 
in  early  childhood,  and  of  the  boys  that  remained, 
their  remarkable  aunt,  Mary  Moody  Emerson,  well 
said,  "  They  were  born  to  be  educated." 

This  was  no  easy  end  for  their  mother  to  achieve 
in  the  straitened  days  that  followed  the  death  of 
the  Rev.  William  Emerson  in  1811.  But  the  First 
Church  and  a  few  kind  friends  and  kinsmen  lent 
their  aid,  and  the  established  training  of  good  Bos- 
tonians,  through  the  Latin  School  and  Harvard 
College,  was  made  possible.  There  were  times  when 
Ralph,  as  he  was  then  called,  and  his  brother  Edward 
had  to  share  the  use  of  one  overcoat,  and  jeering 
schoolfellows  would  ask,  "  Whose  turn  is  it  to 
wear  the  coat  to-day  ? "  The  .boys  helped  in  the 
household  duties,  such  as  driving  the  cow  from  the 
house  where  they  once  lived,  near  the  present  site 
of  the  Boston  Athenaeum,  to  a  pasture  beyond  the 
Common,  and  took  far  less  time  for  play  than  for 
the  improvement  of  their  minds.  At  school  and 
college  Emerson  made  himself  the  name  which  is 
commonly  won  by  studious  boys  of  slender  health 
and  means  and  of  talents  in  no  wise  phenomenal. 
He  was  fourteen  years  old  when  he  entered  Harvard 
College,  and  became  "  President's  freshman,"  a  kind 
of  errand-boy  for  the  faculty,  with  the  privilege  ex 
qfficio  of  serving  as  a  waiter  at  commons,  and  paying 


i8o 


AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 


thereby  for  three-fourths  of  his  own  board.  During 
his  course  he  took  prizes  for  dissertations  and  dec 
lamation,  and  wrote  the  class  poem  after  seven  youths 


A  CURIOUS  EARLY  PORTRAIT  OF  EMERSON. 

had  declined  the  honour;  but  at  the  end  his  college 
rank  was  only  a  little  above  the  middle  of  the  class. 
From    college   Emerson    followed    the    path    he 
might  have  been  expected  to  take,  the   path  of  a 


EMERSON   AND    CONCORD        181 

school-teacher.  His  purpose  to  make  it  the  means 
of  approach  to  the  ministry  was  less  definite  than  in 
many  cases  like  his  own.  It  seems  to  have  been 
a  disappointment  to  him  that  in  teaching  others  he 
did  not  learn  more  himself.  His  scholars  in  vari 
ous  places,  however,  were  unconscious  of  shortcom 
ings.  One  of  them  has  recorded  the  efficacy  of  his 
reproof,  consisting  merely  of  the  words,  "  Oh,  sad  !  " 
soberly  spoken  to  a  youthful  offender.  His  own 
youthfulness  was  not  overlooked  by  the  young 
ladies,  some  of  them  older  than  himself,  whom  he 
taught  in  Boston.  On  Election  Day,  it  is  told, 
they  used  to  ask  him  for  a  holiday  that  he  might 
vote,  and  rejoiced  in  the  blushes  of  their  master, 
still  a  minor.  To  Emerson  the  period  was  one  of 
dissatisfaction  and  drudgery.  In  his  journal  of  1 824, 
a  month  before  he  came  of  age,  he  made  the  entry  : 
"  I  deliberately  dedicate  my  time,  my  talents,  and 
my  hopes  to  the  Church ; "  and  before  a  year  had 
passed  —  that  is,  in  February  of  1825  —  he  was 
established  in  Divinity  Hall  at  Cambridge  as  a 
student  for  the  ministry. 

The  ministerial  period  of  Emerson's  life  was  full 
of  struggle  and  perplexity.  Ill  health  was  the  first 
obstacle  he  had  to  overcome.  The  weakness  of  his 
eyes  interrupted  his  studies  at  once,  and  the  weak 
ness  of  his  lungs  made  it  necessary  for  him  to  spend 
nearly  the  whole  winter  and  spring  of  1827  in  the 
South.  Then  there  were  inward  questionings  about 


182  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

the  rightfulness  of  his  place  even  within  the  flexible 
boundaries  of  Unitarianism.  Whatever  the  younger 
men  of  this  day  may  be  writing  to  aunts  who  have 
their  confidence,  Emerson  at  twenty-three  was 
not  using  the  language  of  his  contemporaries  when 
he  wrote  to  Mary  Moody  Emerson  :  "  'T  is  a  queer 
life,  and  the  only  humour  proper  to  it  seems  quiet 
astonishment."  One  of  the  maxims  of  his  life,  early 
inculcated  by  this  strenuous  aunt,  was,  "  Always  do 
what  you  are  afraid  to  do/'  Both  in  the  earlier  and 
in  the  later  days  of  his  ministry  this  rule  must  have 
been  in  some  measure  his  guide.  He  did  not  do 
the  easy  thing  in  establishing  himself  successfully  as 
a  minister ;  and  when  the  time  came  to  choose  be 
tween  the  pleasant  incumbency  of  the  Second  Church 
in  Boston  and  an  adherence  to  his  personal  opinion 
in  a  matter  of  worship,  it  would  have  been  the 
course  of  least  resistance  to  retain  his  post  and 
modify  his  views.  The  issue  between  him  and  his 
parishioners  was  vital ;  he  had  ceased  to  think  the 
regular  administration  of  the  communion  essential 
or  even  desirable;  naturally  his  people  thought 
otherwise.  He  made  no  attempt  to  impose  his 
views  upon  them,  but  when  it  was  clear  that  no 
common  ground  was  tenable,  he  set  forth  in  a  ser 
mon  his  reasons  for  thinking  as  he  did,  and  brought 
to  an  end  his  connection  with  the  parish.  There 
was  the  best  of  good  feeling  on  each  side.  In 
many  ways  he  had  shown  eminent  fitness  for  the 


From  an  engraving  of  the  crayon  drawing  by  Rowse,  1857. 


OP  TBS 

CnSTIVERSITY 


EMERSON   AND    CONCORD        183 

ministry.  When  a  good  choir  sang,  "  its  best  was 
coarse  and  discordant  after  Emerson's  voice."  His 
sermons  delighted  even  those  who  failed  to  under 
stand  them.  The  sincerity  of  his  more  personal 
relations  and  the  inherent  charm  of  the  man  made 
him  abundantly  beloved.  In  his  strictly  ministerial 
functions  it  appears  that  he  was  not  always  success 
ful.  The  story  is  told  that  once  when  he  was 
called  to  the  death-bed  of  a  Revolutionary  soldier, 
and  showed  some  difficulty  in  administering  the 
usual  consolations,  the  veteran  summoned  all  his 
strength  to  exclaim :  "  Young  man,  if  you  don't 
know  your  business,  you  had  better  go  home." 
But  it  was  the  inward  voice  and  not  rebuffs  like  this 
that  brought  him  to  the  wise  decision  that  his  work 
in  the  world  could  not  be  that  of  a  regular  minister. 
He  was,  in  fact,  too  completely  a  Protestant,  too 
thoroughly  imbued  with  the  "  dissidence  of  dis 
sent  "  to  remain  permanently  in  any  church. 

Emerson  had  married  his  first  wife,  Miss  Ellen 
Louisa  Tucker,  in  September  of  1829,  and  early  in 
1831  she  had  died.  It  was  in  1832  that  he  resigned 
his  ministry  at  the  Second  Church.  It  is  no  won- 
her  that  the  end  of  a  period  so  filled  with  anxiety 
was  marked  by  the  breaking  down  of  his  own  health. 
On  Christmas  Day  of  1832  he  sailed  in  a  small  brig 
for  the  Mediterranean,  and  devoted  the  greater 
part  of  1833  to  regaining  his  strength  in  Italy, 
France,  and  England.  The  picturesque  interest  of 


1 84  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

foreign  lands  was  less  to  him  than  the  human,  and 
in  this  interest  he  was  disappointed,  and  complained 
of  being  "  yoked  with  green,  dull,  pitiful  persons." 
Indeed,  it  was  the  hope  of  searching  out  Carlyle,  in 
whose  contributions  to  the  English  reviews  he  had 
detected  the  accent  of  a  spiritual  kinsman,  that  hur 
ried  him  from  Paris  to  London,  and  from  London 
to  Craigenputtock  in  Scotland,  where  guest  and  host 
each  discovered  in  a  day  and  night  what  was  best  in 
the  other,  and  laid  the  foundations  of  the  friendship 
which  for  nearly  forty  years  survived  the  difficulties 
of  correspondence.  The  basis  of  their  sympathy 
has  been  well  defined  by  Dr.  Holmes:  "The  hatred 
of  unreality  was  uppermost  with  Carlyle ;  the  love 
of  what  is  real  and  genuine  with  Emerson."  It  was 
through  Emerson  in  the  thirties  that  Carlyle  first 
found  an  American  audience,  and  through  Emerson 
in  1870  Carlyle's  gift  of  the  books  he  had  purchased 
and  used  in  writing;  Cromwell  and  Frederick  the 

O 

Great  was  made  to  Harvard  College.  It  has  often 
been  questioned,  however,  whether  the  friendship 
could  have  been  so  well  maintained  if  Carlyle  had 
yielded  to  Emerson's  constant  solicitations  to  come 
to  Concord. 

In  Concord  Emerson  established  himself  soon 
after  his  return  from  Europe.  Before  his  second 
marriage,  in  1835,  to  Miss  Lydia  Jackson,  of 
Plymouth,  he  and  his  mother  went  to  live  in  the 
"  Old  Manse "  with  the  Rev.  Dr.  Ripley,  who 


From  a  photograph  taken  in  Iowa,  1882 


EMERSON   AND    CONCORD        185 

long  before  had  become  the  second  husband  of 
Emerson's  grandmother.  Here  he  worked  upon 
his  essay,  "  Nature,"  which,  published  anonymously 
in  1836,  was  the  first  important  statement  of  his 
philosophy ;  and  here  he  bore  the  first  weeks  of 
grief  for  the  death  of  his  gifted  younger  "  brother 
of  the  brief,  but  blazing  star,'*  Edward  Bliss  Emer 
son,  of  whom  he  wrote  in  prose,  "  I  am  bereaved 
of  a  part  of  myself,"  and  in  poetry  the  lines,  "In 
Memoriam."  Within  two  years  died  another 
brother,  Charles  Chauncy  Emerson,  who  was  soon 
to  have  married  Miss  Elizabeth  Hoar,  of  Concord, 
and  Emerson  wrote  to  his  young  wife:  "You  must 
be  content  henceforth  with  only  a  piece  of  your 
husband ;  for  the  best  of  his  strength  lay  in  the 
soul  with  which  he  must  no  more  on  earth  take 
counsel."  It  was  the  same  phase  of  the  sense  of 
loss  which  found  expression  in  the  "  Threnody  "  on 
the  death  of  his  oldest  child,  Waldo,  in  1842: 

"  The  eager  fate  which  carried  thee 
Took  the  largest  part  of  me  : 
For  this  losing  is  true  dying  ; 
This  is  lordly  man's  down-lying." 

When  Emerson  "  dodged  the  doom  of  building," 
and,  in  1835,  bought  the  Coolidge  house,  standing 
on  the  road  over  which  the  British  fled  from  Con 
cord  to  Lexington,  he  settled  into  the  ways  of  life 
from  which  thenceforth  he  made  few  departures. 


186  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

For  about  three  years  he  continued  to  preach  in 
one  place  and  another  where  he  was  wanted,  and 
then  made  a  complete  end  of  his  active  ministry. 
But  there  were  other  ways  of  delivering  to  men  the 
messages  he  had  to  impart,  and  the  lecture  took 
with  him  the  place  of  the  sermon.  The  growth  of 
the  lyceum  system  was  opportune  for  Emerson. 
"  His,  if  any  one's,"  said  Alcott,  "  let  the  institution 
pass  into  history,  since  his  art,  more  than  another's, 
has  clothed  it  with  beauty,  and  made  it  the  place  of 
popular  resort."  Early  and  late,  east  and  west,  he 
went  about  with  his  lectures,  bearing  delight  and 
stimulus  to  many  minds.  For  the  discomforts  he 
suffered,  his  journal  speaks: 

"  It  was,  in  short  —  this  dragging  a  decorous  old 
gentleman  out  of  home  and  out  of  position,  to  this 
juvenile  career  —  tantamount  to  this:  CI  '11  bet  you 
fifty  dollars  a  day  for  three  weeks  that  you  will  not 
leave  your  library,  and  wade,  and  freeze,  and  ride, 
and  run,  and  suffer  all  manner  of  indignities,  and 
stand  up  for  an  hour  each  night  reading  in  a  hall;' 
and  I  answer, c  I  '11  bet  I  will.'  I  do  it  and  win  the 
nine  hundred  dollars." 

The  beginnings  of  this  work  were  made  nearer 
home,  in  courses  of  lectures  in  Boston,  in  the  awak 
ening  oration,  "The  American  Scholar," 'before  the 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  at  Harvard,  in  1837,  and  in  the 
address  to  the  Senior  Class  of  the  Divinity  School 
at  Cambridge,  in  1838.  The  religious  radicalism  of 


EMERSON   AND    CONCORD        187 

this  address  caused,  indeed,  what  Emerson  defined 
in  a  letter  to  Carlyle  as  a  "  storm  in  our  washbowl." 
It  determined  Emerson's  separation  from  the 
churches,  and,  for  many  years,  from  his  alma  mater. 
The  University  at  the  close  of  the  war  made  amends 
for  its  share  in  the  estrangement  by  asking  him  to 
speak  at  the  Commemoration  exercises;  in  1866  he 
was  made  an  overseer  and  a  Doctor  of  Laws ;  and 
in  1867  he  delivered  for  the  second  time  a  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  oration.  It  was  after  hearing  this  that  Lowell 
wrote  to  Mr.  Norton  the  words  which  described  all 
the  weaknesses  of  Emerson's  oratory,  especially  in 
later  years,  and  also  set  forth  its  peculiar  strength  : 

"  It  began  nowhere,  and  ended  everywhere,  and 
yet,  as  always  with  that  divine  man,  it  left  you  feel 
ing  that  something  beautiful  had  passed  that  way 
—  something  more  beautiful  than  anything  else,  like 
the  rising  and  setting  of  stars.  .  .  .  He  boggled, 
he  lost  his  place,  he  had  to  put  on  his  glasses ; 
but  it  was  as  if  a  creature  from  some  fairer  world 
had  lost  his  way  in  our  fogs,  and  it  was  our  fault, 
not  his." 

If  the  lecturing  began  near  home,  the  source  of 
the  lectures  themselves  was  still  more  intimate. 
Through  all  of  Emerson's  life  he  kept  a  journal,  of 
which  he  wrote  in  1837  :  "This  book  is  my  savings 
bank.  I  grow  richer  because  I  have  somewhere  to 
deposit  my  earnings,  and  fractions  are  worth  more 
to  me  because  corresponding  fractions  are  waiting 


i88 


AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 


EMERSON   AND    CONCORD        189 

here  that  shall  be  made  integers  by  their  addition." 
To  Carlyle  Emerson  wrote  in  1 840  :  "  I  dot  evermore 
in  my  endless  journal  a  line  on  every  knowable  in 
nature ;  but  the  arrangement  loiters  long,  and  I  get 
a  brick-kiln  instead  of  a  house.'*  From  this  store 
of  material  the  builder  frequently  drew  when  the  time 
came  to  write.  If  his  writing  has  been  found  dis 
jointed  by  others,  and  has  seemed  to  himself  a  collec 
tion  of  "  paragraphs  irrepressible,  each  sentence  an 
infinitely  repellent  particle,"  it  is  well  to  remember 
this  fractional  origin  of  it.  If  the  form  has  suffered, 
surely  the  spirit  has  gained  in  the  spontaneity  of 
thoughts  recorded  almost  at  the  moment  of  their 
birth.  From  the  journal  to  the  lecture,  from  the 
lecture  to  the  essay,  pruned  of  anecdote  and  illustra 
tion —  such  was  the  evolution  of  a  great  part  of 
Emerson's  prose.  Many  of  the  poems  had  a  simi 
lar  origin.  Extracts  from  the  journal  have  shown 
his  first  conceptions,  for  example,  of  "  The  Two 
Rivers  "  and  "  Seashore."  Of  «  Days  "  there  is  the 
remarkable  record  in  the  journal  for  1852,  almost  as 
of  another  "  Kubla  Khan  "  : 

"  I  find  one  state  of  mind  does  not  remember  or 
conceive  of  another  state.  Thus  I  have  written 
within  a  twelvemonth  verses  (c  Days  ')  which  I  do  not 
remember  the  composition  or  correction  of,  and 
could  not  write  the  like  to-day,  and  have  only  for 
proof  of  their  being  mine  various  external  evidences, 


190 


AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 


as  the  manuscripts  in  which  I  find  them,  and  the 
circumstances  that  I  have  sent  copies  to  friends,  etc. 
Well,  if  they  had  been  better,  if  it  had  been  a  noble 
poem,  perhaps  it  would  have  only  more  entirely 
taken  up  the  ladder  into  heaven/' 

Like  many  other  men,  Emerson  valued  his 
poetry  more  highly  than  his  prose,  because  it  was 
not  a  thing  which  he  could  produce  at  will.  "  I  can 
breathe  at  any  time,"  he  once  said  to  a  friend,  "  but 
I  can  only  whistle  when  the  right  pucker  comes." 

In  the  homely  humour  of  a  hundred  sentences 
like  this  Emerson  has  left  sufficient  proof  of  the 
qualities  that  saved  him  from  follies  which  his 
friends  of  the  Transcendental  brotherhood  did  not 
escape.  In  his  own  metaphor,  he  hitched  his  wagon 
to  a  star,  but  in  Dr.  Holmes's,  "  he  never  let  go 
the  string  of  his  balloon."  Though  he  could  not 
bring  himself  to  join  the  communities  of  Brook 
Farm  and  Fruitlands,  he  made  attempts  at  home 
to  simplify  his  mode  of  life.  One  of  these  was  to 
seat  his  servants  at  his  own  table,  and  the  plan  was 
thwarted  only  by  the  obduracy  of  the  cook,  who 
looked  upon  human  relations  through  no  mist  of 
theories.  At  one  time  he  believed  in  tilling  his 
own  ground,  but  soon  after  his  infant  son  stopped 
his  work  by  saying,  "  Papa,  I  am  afraid  you  will 
dig  your  leg,"  he  surrendered  the  hoe  and  spade 
to  hands  more  skilled  in  their  use.  His  known 


After  a  photograph,  by  J.  J.  Hawes,  Boston,  of  a  Daguerreotype. 


EMERSON   AND    CONCORD        191 

sympathy  with  all  independence  of  thought  brought 
many  a  strange  "devastator  of  the  day"  to  his 
gates,  and  each  was  received  with  friendly  consider 
ation.  Once  a  Russian  appeared,  so  bent  upon  his 
projects,  that  he  scorned  to  take  off  his  hat  in  the 
house.  "  Very  well,  then,"  said  Emerson,  "  we 
will  talk  in  the  yard,"  and  under  the  apple-trees 
the  interview  was  conducted.  It  must  have  been 
of  men  like  this  visitor,  that  Emerson,  when  one 
of  them  wished  an  introduction  to  him,  said : 
"  Whom  God  hath  put  asunder,  why  should  man 
join  together  ?  " 

Hawthorne  wrote  of  Concord  in  1843  •  "  -^  was 
necessary  to  go  but  a  little  way  beyond  my  thresh 
old  before  meeting  with  stranger  moral  shapes  of 
men  than  might  have  been  encountered  elsewhere 
in  a  circuit  of  a  thousand  miles."  These  were  the 
pilgrims,  "  hobgoblins  of  flesh  and  blood,"  who  came 
to  see  Emerson ;  but  some  of  the  Concord  folk 
themselves  were  strange  enough.  George  William 
Curtis  could  see  the  drollery  of  the  meetings  at 
Emerson's  house  in  1845  °^  a  group  which  con 
tained  such  persons  as  Emerson  himself,  Haw 
thorne,  Thoreau,  Alcott,  and  others,  of  lesser  fame 
but  equally  diverse  in  nature,  to  whom  he  might 
have  added  Margaret  Fuller,  Emerson's  predecessor 
in  the  editorship  of  the  Transcendental  Dial,  if  Mr. 
Greeley  had  not  brought  her  to  earth  as  a  literary 
critic  for  the  New  York  Tribune.  They  sat  about, 


r92  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

said  Curtis,  in  a  silence  which  seemed  to  ask,  "  Who 
will  now  proceed  to  say  the  finest  thing  that  has  ever 
been  said  ?  "  The  assemblage  was  not  unlike  the 
Boston  Transcendental  "club  of  the  like-minded/'  so 
called,  said  one  of  its  members,  "  because  no  two  of 
us  thought  alike."  To  be  absolutely  one's  self,  to 
omit  from  the  mind  all  that  had  come  to  it  by 
tradition  —  as  Emerson  once  advised  a  seeker  after 
Transcendental  truth  —  this  was  the  chief  intellectual 
and  spiritual  purpose  of  the  men  who  recognised 
Emerson  as  their  leader.  The  fulfilment  of  this 
purpose  led  them,  of  course,  in  various  directions. 
It  took  Thoreau,  "  half  college  graduate  and  half 
Algonquin,"  after  he  had  given  up  the  making  of 
lead-pencils,  because  he  would  not  do  twice  what 
he  had  once  done  well,  to  the  banks  of  Walden 
Pond.  The  good  Whittier  could  see  little  virtue 
in  an  experiment  which  proved  "that  if  a  man  is 
willing  to  sink  himself  into  a  woodchuck  he  can 
live  as  cheaply  as  that  quadruped."  But  Emerson 
saw  all  that  was  best  in  Thoreau,  for  two  years  an 
occupant  of  his  house,  and  Thoreau,  with  all  his 
individuality,  undoubtedly  owed  much  to  Emerson. 
Since  Thoreau's  death  in  1862  the  world  has  been 
coming  every  year  nearer  to  Emerson's  way  of 
thinking  about  him,  as  contrasted  with  the  way  of 
their  fellow-townsman,  Judge  Hoar,  who  once 
asked  Colonel  Higginson  "Why  should  anyone  care 
to  have  Thoreau's  journals  put  in  print?"  The 


^     •  ^^ 

From  an  engraving  of  an  ambrotype  taken  in  New  Bedford,  1861 


EMERSON   AND    CONCORD        193 

expression  of  Alcott's  personality  bore  him  into  the 
clouds  of  philosophic  discourse,  and  the  public 
utterance  of  the  soliloquies  to  which  he  gave  the 
strange  name  of cc  Conversations."  Emerson  placed 
a  value  on  Alcott's  mind  which  was  shared  by  few 
of  his  contemporaries,  and  still  fewer  of  the  later 
generation.  At  one  time  he  wished  that  Alcott  and 
his  whole  family  would  come  and  live  with  him, 
but  Mrs.  Alcott's  wise  veto  averted  the  trouble 
which  would  have  been  sure  to  follow.  Emerson's 
admiration,  however,  was  tempered  by  his  good 
sense,  and  he  saw  as  clearly  as  anybody  the  most 
obvious  of  Alcott's  limitations.  For  some  time, 
indeed,  his  eyes  were  obliged  to  rest  upon  a  tangible 
reminder  of  his  friend's  shortcomings  in  practical 
matters.  In  1847  he  essayed  to  build  Emerson  a 
summer-house.  The  result  was  a  structure  which, 
in  its  first  and  best  estate,  Emerson's  mother  called 
"  The  Ruin."  Thoreau  tried  to  help  him  build  it, 
but  had  to  admit :  "  I  feel  as  if  I  were  nowhere, 
doing  nothing." 

The  impression  of  Emerson  as  dwelling  in  cloud- 
land,  the  central  figure  in  a  company  of  ethereal 
shapes,  is  removed  when  he  is  seen  before  other 
backgrounds  than  those  of  Transcendentalism.  The 
good  people  of  Concord  began  by  giving  him  the 
office  of  hogreeve,  usually  bestowed  upon  newly 
married  men,  and  always  found  him  eager  for  the 
well-being  of  the  place,  not  only  in  wishes,  but  in 

13 


i94  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

service.  If  he  had  given  the  town  nothing  but  the 
lines  which  live  with  "the  embattled  farmer"  of 
French's  noble  statue,  it  would  have  been  much. 
But  there  were  many  local  "  occasions  "  made  richer 
by  the  voice  and  wisdom  of  Emerson.  There  was 
no  little  significance  in  the  words  of  a  simple  woman 
who  brought  her  work  to  an  early  end  one  day  to 
go  to  a  lecture  of  Emerson's  before  the  Concord 
Lyceum.  When  she  was  asked  if  she  could  under 
stand  him,  she  replied :  "  Not  a  word,  but  I  like  to 
go  and  see  him  stand  up  there  and  look  as  if  he 
thought  every  one  was  as  good  as  he  was." 
Through  his  friendships  in  Boston,  especially  after 
the  foundation  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly  and  the 
Saturday  Club  in  1857,  he  was  brought  often  into 
contact  with  men  of  the  world,  in  the  best  sense  of 
that  elastic  phrase.  The  names  of  the  men  asso 
ciated  with  the  beginnings  of  these  two  organisations 
are  too  well  known  to  need  repetition.  Emerson 
had  great  pleasure  in  their  society ;  and  of  his 
effect  upon  them,  perhaps  Lowell  spoke  for  all 
when  he  wrote  to  Thomas  Hughes :  "  He  is  as 
sweetly  high-minded  as  ever,  and  when  one  meets 
him  the  Fall  of  Adam  seems  a  false  report.  After 
ward  we  feel  our  throats,  and  are  startled  by  the 
tell-tale  lump  there." 

As  all  men  are  judged  by  their  companions  or 
the  books  on  their  shelves,  so  we  wish  to  know  of 
the  men  who  lived  through  the  civil  war,  what  was 


EMERSON   AND    CONCORD        195 

their  part  in  the  conflict  or  their  attitude  toward  it. 
Emerson  was  not  to  be  found  in  the  ranks  of  aggres 
sive  antislavery  in  the  early  days  when  Whittier 
and  Lowell  had  dedicated  their  powers  to  the  cause. 
One  so  intent  upon  freedom  of  thought  could  not 
be  indifferent  to  the  freedom  of  men,  but  violent 
partisanship  of  any  sort  was  foreign  to  Emerson's 
nature,  and  for  some  time  his  hopefulness  made  him 
believe  that  the  differences  between  the  North  and 
South  could  be  adjusted  without  open  disagreement. 
As  the  issues  defined  themselves  more  clearly,  he 
saw  that  this  could  not  be.  Yet  as  late  as  1855  he 
favoured  the  Government's  purchase  for  emancipa 
tion  of  all  the  slaves  in  the  South  for  the  sum  of 
two  thousand  millions  of  dollars.  If  there  had  been 
any  doubt  that  Emerson  welcomed  the  war  when  it 
came,  it  would  have  been  removed  by  the  series  of 
poems  which  he  brought  one  day  to  Mr.  Fields 
without  a  title :  the  editor  named  them  "Voluntaries," 
and  printed  them  at  once  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly. 
At  the  end  of  their  third  portion  is  the  quatrain, 
quoted  as  often  as  any  lines  of  Emerson's : 

"So  nigh  is  grandeur  to  our  dust, 

So  near  is  God  to  man, 
When  Duty  whispers  low,  Thou  must, 
The  youth  replies,  I  can." 

Of  Emerson's  written  words  which  justify  the  recent 
statement  that  he  sent  ten  thousand  men  to  the  war, 


196  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

these  pre-eminently  breathe  the  spirit  through  which 
he  could  have  wrought  such  a  work. 

To  Emerson's  second  visit  to  Europe,  in  1847-48, 
for  the  purpose  of  lecturing  in  England,  we  owe  his 
English  Traits.  For  him  the  visit,  like  the  lecturing 
tours  in  the  Middle  States  and  West,  was  one  of  the 
strong  counteracting  influences  against  the  dangers 
of  living  too  long  in  a  small  community.  In  1871 
and  1872  he  made  the  last  long  journeys  of  his  life, 
to  California  and  to  Europe  and  the  Nile.  In  the 
time  between  these  journeys  he  had  been  driven 
from  his  house  in  Concord  by  fire,  and  on  his  re 
turn  from  Europe,  in  May  of  1873,  he  was  met  not 
only  with  the  public  demonstration  of  his  townsmen, 
who  escorted  him  with  music  from  the  train  to  his 
house,  but  with  the  private  delight  of  finding  the 
house  rebuilt  and  restored  to  its  former  condition 
through  the  kindness  of  personal  friends.  From 
this  time  forth  his  public  appearances  were  rare,  and 
within  a  few  years  they  were  given  over  entirely. 
As  Dr.  Holmes  expressed  it  in  a  letter  to  Lowell : 
"  Emerson  is  gently  fading  out  like  a  photograph  — 
the  outlines  are  all  there,  but  the  details  are  getting 
fainter."  There  was  a  gradual  failure  of  the  memory, 
noticeable  especially  in  his  attempts  to  recall  the 
names  of  familiar  objects,  and  often  of  dear  friends. 
"  My  memory  hides  itself,"  he  said.  There  was  a 
pathos,  touched  with  humour,  in  his  asking  one  day 
for  an  umbrella  after  this  wise  :  "  I  can't  tell  its  name. 


RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON. 
From  an  original  drawing,  artist  and  date  unknown. 


OFTH* 

XTNIVERSITT 


EMERSON   AND    CONCORD        197 

but  I  can  tell  its  history.  Strangers  take  it  away." 
In  spite  of  disabilities,  however,  he  spent  much  time 
in  his  last  years  in  helping  Mr.  Cabot,  his  literary 
executor,  to  fix  the  final  form  of  some  of  his  writ 
ings.  When  the  end,  so  gradual  in  its  approach, 
really  came,  it  came  quickly.  A  severe  cold  passed 
into  pneumonia,  and  on  April  27 th,  1882,  Emer 
son  died,  within  a  month  of  his  seventy-ninth 
birthday. 

Those  who  knew  Emerson  best  found  in  him 
something  ineffable,  something  which  defied  the 
analysis  of  words.  Those  who  know  him  only  by 
tradition  find  in  whatever  is  told  about  him  the 
complement  of  his  writings.  Jn  them  he  stands 
aloof  from  sordid  aims,  sufficient  unto  himself, 
serene,  clear-sighted,  sensitive,  and  hopeful.  Mat 
thew  Arnold,  after  an  elaborate  statement  of  what 
he  is  not  as  a  writer,  declares  succinctly  what  he 
is  —  "the  friend  and  aider  of  those  who  would 
live  in  the  spirit."  From  such  an  one  it  is  not  to 
be  expected  that  all  the  needs  of  man  will  derive 
sustenance,  for  man  is  not  a  bloodless  creature  of 
mind  and  spirit  only.  There  is  more  than  the 

"hidden  ground 
Of  thought  and  of  austerity  within  ; ' ' 

but  it  is  to  this  portion  of  our  nature  that  Emer 
son  especially  ministers.  Let  none  find  fault  with 
him  for  what  he  is  not.  Others  can  give  us  other 


198  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

things.  Emerson's  precious  gift  is  as  unmistakably 
from  himself  as  the  life  he  chose  to  live  was  his 
own. 

This  were  a  late  hour  to  begin  a  new  discussion 
of  Emerson's  place  as  an  essayist  and  poet,  a  phil 
osopher,  an  interpreter  of  man  to  himself,  of  nature 
and  of  universal  law.  His  writings  are  so  easily 
within  the  reach  of  all,  that  even  the  few  to  whom 
they  are  closed  books  have  but  to  open  them. 
"  Glad  when  you  speak  my  thoughts,  and  skipping 
the  page  that  has  nothing  for  me : "  such  was 
Emerson's  own  rule  of  reading,  and  doubtless  he 
would  have  had  others  come  to  him  on  the  same 
terms.  "  If  you  see  truth  as  he  does,"  said  one  of 
his  admirers,1  "  you  will  recognise  him  for  a  gifted 
teacher;  if  not,  there  is  little  or  nothing  to  be 
said."  But  whether  one's  angle  of  vision  corre 
sponds  with  Emerson's  or  not,  this  consideration 
cannot  be  overlooked,  that  of  all  the  emancipating 
influences  which  have  affected  the  thought  of  men 
since  Emerson's  voice  was  first  heard  in  the  world, 
there  has  probably  been  among  us  no  single  per 
sonal  agency  of  wider  scope  than  his.  The  very 
men  who  would  be  last  to  confess  it  are  in  his  debt. 
Their  disagreement  from  opinions  to  be  found  on 
one  page  of  his  writings  is  in  all  probability  tem 
pered  with  a  generosity  which  they  have  learned  on 
another  page.  "  An  iconoclast  without  a  hammer," 
Dr.  Holmes  once  called  him,  "who  took  down  our 


EMERSON   AND    CONCORD        199 

idols  from  their  pedestals  so  tenderly  that  it  seemed 
like  an  act  of  worship."  It  is  not  necessary  to 
share  in  all  the  beliefs  or  unbeliefs  of  such  an 
iconoclast  to  gain  many  things  from  the  imitation 
of  his  spirit. 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE 

IT  is  related  of  one  of  our  magazines  that  some 
years  ago  it  published  a  story,  translated  from 
the  German,  which  was  found  to  be  nothing  but 
Hawthorne's  "  Great  Stone  Face "  restored  to  its 
native  language.  "  Here  was  the  story,"  says  Mr. 
Julian  Hawthorne,  "sentence  for  sentence  the  same, 
yet  as  different  from  it  as  is  a  cabbage  from  a  rose." 
The  subtle  aroma  which  marks  it  as  Hawthorne's 
had  entirely  escaped.  A  similar  mischance  befell 
Longfellow's  "  Tell  me  not  in  mournful  numbers," 
when  it  found  its  way  through  a  Chinese  translation 
back  into  English  as  "  Do  not  manifest  your  dis 
content  in  a  piece  of  verse."  Such  are  the  penalties 
of  fame  for  those  who  must  be  read  in  all  languages. 
It  is  not  too  fanciful,  perhaps,  to  detect  an  analogy 
between  these  processes  of  translation  and  the 
changes  which  befall  an  actual  man  in  becoming  the 
man  of  biographies.  His  real  life  is  the  original 
story ;  the  impression  it  makes  upon  those  who 
observe  it  is  the  translation ;  the  writers  of  biog 
raphies  attempt  to  restore  it  to  its  mother  tongue. 
If  the  divergence  is  sometimes  wide  it  is  no  great 
wonder. 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE       201 

When  the  subject  of  these  attempts  is  a  man  with 
a  personality  so  baffling  as  Hawthorne's,  the  wonder 
is  that  he  is  re-translated  with  any  success  at  all. 
Precisely  contrary  opinions  of  him  have  been  placed 
upon  record.  He  was  one  thing  in  his  daily  life, 
and  quite  another  in  his  books.  His  son  Julian, 
though  eighteen  years  old  when  his  father  died, 
read  none  of  Hawthorne's  books  until  after  that 
time,  and  then  could  not  understand  how  such  a 
man  as  the  father  he  had  known  was  their  author. 
When  The  Scarlet  Letter  appeared,  a  good  friend 
wrote  to  Hawthorne  :  "  I  should  fancy  from  your 
books  that  you  were  burdened  with  secret  sorrow ; 
that  you  had  some  blue  chamber  in  your  soul,  into 
which  you  hardly  dared  to  enter  yourself;  but  when 
I  see  you,  you  give  me  the  impression  of  a  man  as 
healthy  as  Adam  was  in  Paradise."  Hawthorne 
definitely  objected  to  the  unveiling  of  his  real  self 
in  public,  and  would  have  been  well  content  to  let 
his  works  of  fiction  and  his  Note-Books  speak  for  him. 
Indeed,  the  autobiography  of  his  spirit  is  writ  large 
in  all  his  many  volumes ;  but  his  representatives, 
in  spite  of  his  recorded  wish  that  this  might  suffice, 
have  seen  fit  to  be  more  explicit.  It  must  be  said 
in  their  justification  that  they  have  helped  the 
world  at  least  in  coming  somewhat  nearer  to  a  true 
estimate  of  one  who  did  not  belong  only  to  them, 
but  joined  himself  to  the  greatness  of  the  literature 
of  the  English  tongue. 


202  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

A  critic  across  the  seas  once  spoke  of  Hawthorne 
as  "  the  ghost  of  New  England."  Although  it  was 
not  intended  that  this  phrase  should  be  taken  in  its 
most  obvious  sense,  it  may  surely  be  said  that  there 
was  good  reason  for  the  author  and  his  books  to 
be  haunted  with  the  past  of  his  native  land.  The 
son  of  the  first  American  Hathorne  (as  Hawthorne 
himself  wrote  the  name  throughout  his  boyhood)  was 
a  stern  judge  in  the  witch  trials  at  Salem,  and  is  said 
to  have  called  down  upon  himself  from  one  found 
guilty  of  witchcraft  a  curse  not  unlike  Matthew 
Maule's  upon  Colonel  Pyncheon.  Perhaps  it  was 
this  curse  which  prevented  the  family  of  Hathorne, 
mariners  through  many  generations,  from  achieving 
the  material  success  of  other  seafaring  families  in 
Salem.  They  did  succeed,  however,  in  transmitting 
to  Hawthorne  certain  well-defined  traits  of  New 
England  character,  especially  an  independent  vigour 
of  spirit  which  in  itself  is  no  mean  inheritance. 
His  mother,  Elizabeth  Clarke  Manning,  came  of 
another  family  long  established  in  Salem.  That 
she  was  by  no  means  an  ordinary  person  may  be 
inferred  from  the  fact  that  when  her  husband  died 
of  yellow  fever  in  Surinam  in  1808,  she  restricted 
herself  to  the  privacy  of  her  own  house  and  room, 
and  did  not  emerge  from  it  through  the  remaining 
forty-one  years  of  her  life.  She  was  but  twenty- 
eight  at  the  time  of  Captain  Nathaniel  Hathorne's 
death,  and  of  the  three  children  that  were  left  to 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE       203 

her,  the  oldest  and  the  youngest  were  daughters. 
Her  son  Nathaniel  was  born  in  Salem  on  July  4, 
1804.  If  her  spirit  and  influence  had  not  be 
queathed  a  strange  equipment  of  sensibility  to  her 
children,  it  would  be  time  to  look  about  for  new 
theories  touching  the  early  formation  of  character. 

Hawthorne  was  an  active,  well-formed  boy,  as  he 
was  a  man  of  uncommon  physical  beauty.  But  an 
accident  to  one  of  his  feet,  while  he  was  playing  at 
"  bat-and-ball "  one  day,  rendered  him  quite  lame 
for  a  portion  of  his  youth,  in  which  he  acquired 
voracious  habits  of  reading,  and  fortunately  the 
English  classics  were  the  books  within  his  reach. 
An  event  of  even  more  important  influence  was  the 
early  removal  of  his  family  to  Raymond,  Maine, 
where  his  mother's  people  owned  a  large  tract  of 
land.  "  It  was  there,"  said  Hawthorne  in  later  life, 
"that  I  first  got  my  cursed  habits  of  solitude." 
The  woods  about  Sebago  Lake,  the  ice  that  cov 
ered  it  in  winter,  gave  him  free  foot  for  solitary 
excursions  under  sun  and  stars.  He  lived,  he  said, 
like  a  bird  of  the  air.  But  his  mother,  for  all  her 
own  seclusion,  would  not  have  the  boy  grow  up  in 
complete  separation  from  men,  and  sent  him  back  to 
Salem,  where  a  private  instructor  prepared  him  for 
entrance  to  Bowdoin  College.  Longfellow  was  one 
of  his  classmates,  though  not  of  his  intimates  in  col 
lege.  Horatio  Bridge,  afterwards  Paymaster-General 
of  the  Navy,  was  both,  and,  moreover,  was  acknowl- 


204  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

edged  by  Hawthorne  as  the  friend  who  was  respon 
sible  for  his  becoming  an  author.  In  the  class 
above  him  was  Franklin  Pierce,  a  lifelong  friend,  of 
whom  Hawthorne  could  write  when  both  were 
growing  old,  "  I  do  not  love  him  one  whit  the  less 
for  having  been  President."  At  his  graduation,  in 
1825,  Hawthorne's  college  rank  was  eighteenth  in  a 
class  of  thirty-eight,  but,  especially  in  "  the  human 
ities,"  he  had  acquired  some  sound  learning,  and  in 
his  long  walks  and  frank  intercourse  with  his  best 
friends,  he  had  doubtless  gained  a  knowledge  of 
himself  and  of  them  which  was  to  serve  him  well. 

As  a  period  of  human  companionships  Haw 
thorne's  four  years  at  college  stand  out  in  bright 
relief.  He  had  come  there  from  a  solitary  boy 
hood,  and  emerged  into  a  manhood  still  more  soli 
tary.  While  all  his  friends  were  taking  up  active 
pursuits,  he  established  himself  with  his  mother 
and  sisters  at  Salem,  whither  they  had  returned  to 
live  in  the  house  of  his  grandfather  Manning. 
Instead  of  undertaking  any  recognised  work,  "  year 
after  year,"  he  said,  "  I  kept  on  considering  what  I 
was  fit  for."  But  he  had  known  for  a  long  time. 
Even  as  a  boy  he  had  written  from  Salem  to  his 
mother  in  Maine :  "  What  do  you  think  of  my 
becoming  an  author,  and  relying  for  support  upon 
my  pen  ?  Indeed,  I  think  the  illegibility  of  my 
handwriting  is  very  author-like.  How  proud  you 
would  be  to  see  my  books  praised  by  the  reviewers 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE       205 

as  equal  to  the  proudest  productions  of  the  scrib 
bling  sons  of  John  Bull."  In  pursuance  of  this 
inclination  he  seems  to  have  made  up  his  mind  in 
college  to  adopt  the  profession  of  authorship ;  once 
committed  to  it,  and  conscious  of  the  powers  within 
him,  he  would  not  permit  himself  or  others  to  turn 
them  cheaply  to  account.  His  first  book,  Seven 
Tales  of  My  Native  Land,  he  burned  in  manuscript. 
His  second,  Fans/iawe,  a  novel,  he  made  every 
effort  to  disown  and  suppress.  What  he  desired 
above  and  beyond  any  immediate  success  was  to  do 
only  such  work  as  he  felt  to  be  worthy  of  him. 

It  was  a  strange  apprenticeship  to  which  he  bound 
himself.  It  is  hard  to  think  of  another  writer  whose 
young  manhood  is  not  to  be  regarded  in  the  light  of 
its  outward  circumstances.  Nearly  all  the  circum 
stances  of  Hawthorne's  life  for  some  years  after  his 
leaving  college  were  inward.  Though  possessed  of 
such  beauty  of  person  that  an  old  gipsy  woman, 
meeting  him  suddenly  in  the  woods,  exclaimed, 
"  Are  you  a  man  or  an  angel  ?  "  and  though  sought 
out  for  a  time  by  the  "  good  society  "  of  his  native 
town,  he  kept  himself  resolutely  to  himself.  "  For 
months  together,"  to  repeat  his  own  words,  "  I 
scarcely  held  human  intercourse  outside  of  my  own 
family,  seldom  going  out  except  at  twilight,  or  only 
to  take  the  nearest  way  to  the  most  convenient  soli 
tude,  which  was  oftenest  the  seashore.  .  .  .  Once  a 
year  or  thereabouts  I  used  to  make  an  excursion  of 


206  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

a  few  weeks,  in  which  I  enjoyed  as  much  of  life  as 
other  people  in  the  whole  year  round."  He  doubted 
whether  so  many  as  twenty  persons  in  Salem  were 
aware  of  his  existence.  Within  his  mother's  house, 
his  cloistral  habits  were  not  infringed  upon.  For 
months  at  a  time  he  scarcely  saw  his  older  sister, 
who  was  almost  as  strict  a  recluse  as  his  mother. 
Both  of  these  ladies  had  their  meals  brought  to  their 
separate  rooms.  Indeed,  this  was  Mrs.  Hawthorne's 
unbroken  custom  from  the  time  of  her  husband's 
death.  In  the  evening  she  and  her  younger  daugh 
ter  used  to  come  down  to  the  little  parlour  and  sit 
with  Hawthorne.  Love  and  respect  seem  to  have 
gone  out  from  each  corner  of  the  curious  personal 
quadrangle  to  each  and  all  of  the  other  corners,  but 
the  life  of  the  family  could  not  have  been  such  as  to 
make  amends  in  any  way  for  the  dearth  of  human 
influences  from  without. 

Hawthorne,  to  be  sure,  maintained  a  certain  con 
tact  with  mankind  through  correspondence  with  his 
college  friends,  and  by  means  of  his  occasional  ex 
cursions  into  the  world.  It  marked  him  as  a  man 
of  uncommon  mould  that  by  looking  merely  into 
himself,  and  drawing  forth  what  he  found  there,  he 
could  produce  so  much  that  was  worth  producing, 
for  this  is  not  the  usual  result  of  such  a  process. 
In  his  room  at  Salem,  which  has  been  well  called 
"  the  ante-chamber  of  his  fame,"  he  read  and  wrote 
interminably.  The  results  of  this  labour  were  pub- 


HAWTHORNE  AT   36. 
From  the  Etching  by  S.  A.  Schoff,  after  a  portrait, 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE       207 

lished  in  the  magazines  of  the  day,  and  in  Good- 
rich's  annual,  The  Token,  where  Willis's  first  efforts 
were  rapidly  winning  him  fame,  while  Hawthorne's 
attracted  so  little  attention  that  he  could  call  him 
self  with  some  truth,  "  the  obscurest  man  of  letters 
in  America."  It  was  twelve  years  after  his  gradua 
tion  from  college  —  that  is,  in  1837  — that  the  first 
collection  of  Twice-Told  Tales  brought  together  the 
best  of  his  work  for  this  period.  Longfellow  wrote  an 
appreciative  review  of  it  for  The  North  American,  and 
so  moved  Hawthorne,  that  he  despatched  a  hearty 
letter  to  his  old  classmate,  saying  :  "  Whether  or  no 
the  public  will  agree  to  the  praise  you  bestow  on 
me,  there  are  at  least  five  persons  who  think  you 
the  most  sagacious  critic  on  earth  —  viz.,  my  mother 
and  two  sisters,  my  old  maiden  aunt,  and  finally  — 
the  sturdiest  believer  of  the  whole  five  —  my  own 
self."  It  is  no  wonder  that  the  praise  of  Long 
fellow  brought  true  pleasure  to  one  who  complained 
that  for  lack  of  approbation  he  had  cc  always  written 
with  benumbed  fingers."  He  could  not  have  been 
blind  to  the  relation  between  his  life  and  his  Tales 
even  before  1851,  when  he  wrote  in  the  preface  of 
a  new  edition:  "The  book,  if  you  would  see  any 
thing  in  it,  requires  to  be  read  in  the  clear,  brown, 
twilight  atmosphere  in  which  it  was  written ;  if 
opened  in  the  sunshine,  it  is  apt  to  look  exceedingly 
like  a  volume  of  blank  pages." 

Hawthorne  had  come  out  from  his  twilight  atmos- 


2o8  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

phere  for  a  short  time  before  the  publication  of 
Twice-Told  Tales  to  edit  an  ill-fated  American  Mag 
azine  of  Knowledge  in  Boston,  and  would  have  stood 
in  a  still  more  glaring  light  if  his  desire  to  be  ap 
pointed  historian  of  a  Government  expedition  to 
the  South  Polar  seas  had  been  fulfilled.  He  gained 
no  glory  by  the  anonymous  writing  of  Peter  Parley's 
Universal  History  (1837).  Two  events  which  soon 
took  place,  however,  brought  about  all-important 
changes  in  the  course  of  his  life,  and  saved  him 
from  the  dangers  of  continuing  longer  in  his  career 
of  solitude.  The  one  was  his  appointment  by 
George  Bancroft,  in  1839,  as  weigher  and  gauger 
in  the  Boston  Custom-House ;  the  other  was  his 
engagement  to  Miss  Sophia  Peabody,  of  Salem, 
which  occurred  at  about  the  same  time. 

It  cannot  be  imagined  that  the  life  Hawthorne 
had  been  leading  could  naturally  bring  him  to 
matrimony.  But  for  his  writings  it  is  to  be 
doubted  whether  his  path  would  ever  have  crossed 
that  of  the  Peabody  family.  The  three  sisters  of 
that  name,  however,  had  read  and  admired  certain 
fugitive  pieces  of  writing  which  they  had  succeeded 
in  tracing  to  their  townsman,  and  through  the 
rather  difficult  mediation  of  his  sisters,  they  made 
his  acquaintance.  This  was  in  1837,  and  neither 
Hawthorne's  reserve  nor  Sophia  Peabody's  invalid- 
ism  could  have  given  promise  of  the  result.  Un 
interruptedly  from  her  twelfth  year  she  had  been 


HAWTHORNE  AT  46. 
From  an  engraving  of  a  portrait  by  C.  G.  Thompson. 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE       209 

afflicted  with  an  acute  nervous  headache.  She  had 
felt  that  she  must  never  marry,  yet  her  illness  had 
served  to  heighten  all  the  beauties  of  a  nature  in 
herently  beautiful,  and  Hawthorne  recognised  her 
for  what  she  was ;  nor  did  she  fail,  early  or  late,  to 
see  in  Hawthorne  the  incarnation  of  all  her  ideals. 
When  they  became  conditionally  engaged  she  said 
to  him,  "  If  God  intends  us  to  marry,  He  will  let 
me  be  cured  ;  if  not,  it  will  be  a  sign  that  it  is  not 
best."  It  was  not  only  possible  for  them  to  marry 
in  1842,  but  from  that  time  forth  her  malady  never 
returned. 


HAWTHORNE'S  AUTOGRAPH. 

It  was  an  abrupt  transition  for  Hawthorne  from 
the  quiet  of  Salem  to  the  Boston  wharves,  noisy  with 
the  unlading  of  coal-schooners.  But  he  toiled 
faithfully  at  his  work  of  supervision,  and  did  not 
let  the  opportunity  of  observing  keenly  the  ways 
of  men  and  of  his  own  heart  pass  unimproved. 
His  next  change  of  surroundings  provided  him 
with  contrasts  no  less  striking,  for  in  1841  he  joined 
his  fortunes  with  those  of  the  Brook  Farm  commu 
nity.  Here  he  toiled  like  a  veritable  Hodge,  and 
stored  his  mind  and  his  Note-Books  with  many  im 
pressions  which  found  their  way  into  The  Blithedale 

14 


210  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

Romance  ten  years  later.  Emerson  suggested  many 
of  the  shortcomings  of  the  Brook  Farm  experiment 
when  he  wrote :  "  The  ladies  again  took  cold  on 
washing-days,  and  it  was  ordained  that  the  gentle 
men  shepherds  should  hang  out  the  clothes,  which 
they  punctually  did ;  but  a  great  anachronism  fol 
lowed  in  the  evening,  for  when  they  began  to  dance 
the  clothes-pins  dropped  plentifully  from  their 
pockets."  Hawthorne,  too,  had  so  clear  a  vision 
for  the  humour  of  things,  that  he  could  not  take 
himself  and  his  "brethren  in  affliction,"  as  he  called 
them,  altogether  seriously  in  their  new  life.  The 
eight  cows  and  the  "  transcendental  heifer  belong 
ing  to  Miss  Margaret  Fuller"  were  never  com 
plete  realities  to  him,  though  he  worked  hard  in 
the  barnyard.  There  was,  however,  sufficient 
reality  in  the  loss  of  his  Custom-House  savings, 
which  he  had  invested  in  the  community,  and  in 
his  failure  to  satisfy  himself  that  the  farm  would 
be  the  best  place  for  him  to  begin  his  married  life. 
He  could'  not  have  chosen  a  better  place  for  this 
purpose  than  the  Old  Manse  at  Concord,  where  he 
and  his  bride  took  up  their  abode  in  the  summer  of 
1842.  The  introductory  paper  to  the  Mosses  from 
an  Old  Manse  (1846)  tells  with  inimitable  charm  as 
much  as  Hawthorne  was  willing  to  tell  of  the  delight 
of  his  new  life.  He  frankly  declares  himself  to  be 
not  "  one  of  those  supremely  hospitable  people  who 
serve  up  their  own  hearts,  delicately  fried,  with  brain 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE       211 

sauce,  as  a  tidbit  for  their  beloved  public."  One 
cannot  help  feeling  that  something  like  this  has 
been  done  in  the  publication  of  Mrs.  Hawthorne's 
intimate  letters  written  at  this  time.  But  the  life 
which  they  reveal  was  filled  with  ideal  beauty,  the 
more  rare  because  it  remained  unchanged  till 
the  end.  In  these  early  days  Hawthorne  is  seen 
raising  vegetables,  which  acquire  from  his  care  a 
flavour  unknown  before  on  earth  ;  nobly  cooking 
and  washing  dishes  in  domestic  emergencies ;  and 
rejoicing  his  young  wife  with  long  evenings  of  read 
ing  aloud.  How  shrewd  an  eye  she  herself  pos 
sessed,  a  single  bit  of  winter  landscape-drawing  will 
show :  "  One  afternoon  Mr.  Emerson  and  Mr. 
Thoreau  went  with  him  down  the  river.  Henry 
Thoreau  is  an  experienced  skater,  and  was  figuring 
dithyrambic  dances  and  Bacchic  leaps  on  the  ice  — 
very  remarkable,  but  very  ugly,  methought.  Next 
him  followed  Mr.  Hawthorne,  wrapped  in  his  cloak, 
moved  like  a  self-impelled  Greek  statue,  stately 
and  grave.  Mr.  Emerson  closed  the  line,  evidently 
too  weary  to  hold  himself  erect,  pitching  headfore 
most,  half  lying  on  the  air."  The  deeper  spiritual 
understanding  constantly  shown  in  these  letters  of 
Mrs.  Hawthorne's  made  her  a  wife  in  whose  com 
radeship  her  husband  could  not  suffer  again  from 
loneliness.  The  birth  of  his  daughter  Una  at  Con 
cord  rendered  Hawthorne's  home  still  more  com 
pletely  the  centre  of  his  life.  The  scene5  however, 


212  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

was  not  to  remain  long  unchanged,  and  late  in  1845 
the  little  family  left  the  Manse,  and  moved  to  Salem, 
where  Hawthorne  soon  received  President  Folk's 
appointment  as  surveyor  in  the  Custom-House. 

It  is  hardly  surprising  that  the  prosaic  duties  of 
the  radically  new  surroundings  were  not  productive 
at  once  of  literary  results.  But  when  a  little  more 
than  three  years  had  passed,  during  which  time  his 
son  was  born,  his  mother  died,  and  Hawthorne 
himself  suffered  political  decapitation,  he  was  ready 
to  show  the  world  that  the  years  had  not  gone  in 
vain.  His  wife  hailed  the  release  from  office  as  the 
opportunity  for  writing  his  book,  and  to  her  hus 
band's  amazement  brought  forth  a  sum  of  money 
which  she  had  been  saving  against  a  rainy  day. 
His  mind  was  doubtless  full  of  The  Scarlet  Letter, 
for  it  took  him  only  six  months  to  write  it,  amid 
the  distractions  of  his  mother's  fatal  illness  and  his 
own  sufferings  of  care  and  pain.  James  T.  Fields 
has  told  with  what  difficulty  he  forced  Hawthorne, 
when  the  book  was  done,  even  to  admit  that  he  had 
been  about  such  a  piece  of  work,  and  to  surrender 
up  the  manuscript.  The  publisher's  delight  in  the 
story  as  a  work  of  art  seems  to  have  exceeded  his 
belief  in  it  as  a  commercial  venture,  for  as  soon  as 
the  first  edition  of  five  thousand  copies  was  printed 
the  type  was  distributed.  In  ten  days  the  entire 
edition  was  sold,  and  all  the  printers'  work  had  to  be 
done  over  again.  The  book  was  published  in  1850, 


U    £ 


^  g 

CiT  en 

2  W 

<  S 


OP  THB 

UNIVERSITY 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE       213 

and  won  the  world's  instant  recognition,  at  home 
and  abroad,  of  Hawthorne's  consummate  literary 
skill  and  penetrating  vision  into  the  mysteries  of 
the  human  soul.  Thenceforth  his  fame  was  secure. 
Thenceforth,  also,  his  physical  powers  were  as 
those  of  a  man  no  longer  young.  With  the  hope 
that  change  might  be  of  benefit,  he  moved  in  1850 
with  his  family  to  Lenox,  and  lived  for  a  little  more 
than  a  year  in  a  small  red  farmhouse,  which  bore  to 
his  eyes  the  aspect  of  the  Scarlet  Letter.  Here  his 
youngest  child  was  born,  and  here  he  wrote  The 
House  of  the  Seven  Gables  —  which  he  frankly  called 
"  a  more  natural  book  for  me  to  write  than  The 
Scarlet  Letter  was,"  and  also  The  Wonder  Book,  pro 
jected  some  years  before,  it  appears,  as  a  thing  to 
be  done  in  collaboration  with  Longfellow.  Here, 
too,  he  is  seen  in  intercourse  with  friends  and  his 
children,  which  showed  him  to  be  something  other 
than  the  brooding  mystic  of  his  books,  and  the 
moody,  inaccessible  creature  of  common  report. 
His  son  tells  of  his  own  boyish  delight  in  the  nut 
ting  excursions  in  which  the  father,  standing  beneath 
a  great  walnut-tree,  used  to  bid  the  children  turn 
their  backs  and  cover  their  faces,  till  they  heard  a 
shout  above  them,  when  they  looked  up  to  see 
Hawthorne,  "  a  delightful  mystery  and  miracle," 
in  the  topmost  branches.  Such  are  the  brighter 
glimpses  of  the  Lenox  life,  from  which  an  increas 
ing  spirit  of  unrest  bore  Hawthorne  with  his  family, 


2i4  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

before  the  end  of  1851,  back  to  the  neighbourhood 
of  Boston.  The  winter  that  followed  was  spent  in 
the  house  of  Mrs.  Hawthorne's  brother-in-law, 
Horace  Mann,  at  West  Newton,  and  here  The 
Blithedale  Romance  was  written  between  the  first  of 
December  and  the  end  of  April.  The  three  years 
brought  to  a  close  by  this  performance  are  almost 
without  parallel  in  the  importance  of  their  produc 
tiveness. 

The  time  had  come  for  Hawthorne  to  establish 
himself  more  permanently  in  one  place,  and  Con 
cord,  the  town  of  his  happiest  days,  was  naturally 
chosen.  Here  he  bought  from  Alcott  the  house 
known  as  "  Wayside,"  standing  a  little  farther  from 
the  village  than  Emerson's  dwelling  upon  the  same 
road.  It  was  told  of  Hawthorne  in  Lenox  that 
when  in  his  walks  he  saw  the  approach  of  any  one 
to  whom  he  might  have  to  talk,  he  would  suddenly 
leave  the  road  and  take  to  the  pasture  beside  it. 
His  aversion  to  promiscuous  intercourse  kept  him 
in  Concord  from  taking  any  such  part  in  the  village 
life  as  Emerson  took.  Alcott,  his  next-door  neigh 
bour,  has  told  how  difficult  it  was  to  see  him  except 
as  a  hare  vanishing  in  the  shrubbery  on  the  hill 
behind  his  house.  Here  he  used  to  walk  to  and 
fro  for  hours  under  the  larches  in  the  path  which 
he  called  "  the  only  remembrance  of  me  that  will 
remain."  Emerson's  son  has  recorded  the  one 
formal  visit  paid  by  Hawthorne  to  his  father's 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE       215 

house,  on  a  certain  Sunday  evening  when  the  caller, 
to  cover  his  shyness,  began  looking  at  pictures  in 
a  stereoscope.  He  asked  what  the  scenes  were, 
and  was  much  surprised  to  hear  that  they  were  the 
Concord  Court  and  Town  House  and  Common, 
all  of  which  his  body  must  have  passed,  at  least 
occasionally,  though  his  spirit  was  elsewhere.  An 
other  resident  of  Concord,  the  clear-sighted  Henry 
James,  Sr.,  in  writing  to  Emerson  of  a  Satur 
day  Club  dinner  at  which  Hawthorne  was  pres 
ent,  said  :  "  He  has  the  look  all  the  time,  to  one 
who  does  n't  know  him,  of  a  rogue  who  finds  him 
self  suddenly  in  a  company  of  detectives."  Haw 
thorne  himself  knew  that  the  dinner-table  of  any 
house  but  his  own  was  not  the  best  place  for  him, 
and  once  said :  "  I  have  an  almost  miraculous 
power  of  escaping  from  necessities  of  this  kind. 
Destiny  itself  has  often  been  worsted  in  the  attempt 
to  get  me  out  to  dinner." 

That  such  a  man,  after  two  experiences  of  politi 
cal  office,  should  have  been  removed  again  from 
private  life  was  one  of  the  anomalies  of  his  career. 
The  writing  of  the  Tanglewood  Tales  soon  after  his 
removal  to  Concord  was  more  what  might  have 
been  expected  of  him  than  any  mingling  in  a  presi 
dential  campaign.  But  his  friend  Pierce  had  been 
nominated  for  the  Presidency,  and  Hawthorne  has 
tened  to  his  support  with  the  offer  of  any  service 
in  his  power.  This,  he  was  told,  might  best  be 


216  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

a  campaign  life  of  the  candidate.  When  it  was 
written,  and  Pierce  was  elected,  of  course  it  was 
said  that  the  book  paid  the  price  of  the  good 
appointment  to  the  Liverpool  consulate.  This  crit 
icism  had  its  sufficient  answer,  for  Hawthorne  and 
for  all  minds  capable  of  generous  judgment,  in 
the  friendship  between  him  and  Pierce,  long  before 
his  presidency  and  long  after  it.  The  outward 
episode  revealed  less  of  Hawthorne  than  an  anec 
dote  related  by  Pierce.  When  he  was  nominated, 
"  Hawthorne  came  to  see  him,  sat  down  by  him 
on  a  sofa,  and  after  a  melancholy  silence,  heaving 
a  deep  sigh,  said,  c  Frank,  what  a  pity !  '  Then, 
after  a  pause,  c  But,  after  all,  this  world  was  not 
meant  to  be  happy  in  —  only  to  succeed  in  ! ' 

Hawthorne  succeeded  well  enough  at  Liverpool, 
where  he  performed  the  duties  of  consul  from  1853 
to  1857.  For  three  years  after  his  resignation  he 
remained  abroad,  especially  in  Italy  and  England, 
enjoying  some  of  the  most  satisfying  friendships  of 
his  life,  and  writing  or  preparing  to  write  the  books 
which  fixed  his  fame  more  firmly  from  year  to  year, 
even  after  his  death,  when  the  passages  from  his 
various  Note-Books  were  published.  The  literary 
result  of  sojourns  in  Europe  would  furnish  forth 
a  chapter  by  itself  in  any  account  of  American 
writers.  The  effect  of  foreign  lands  upon  Irving, 
Cooper,  Willis,  and  a  score  of  others  were  no  un 
fruitful  theme.  Here  it  suffices  to  be  thankful  for 


HAWTHORNE  AT   56. 
From  an  engraving  of  a  photograph  by  Mayal,  London. 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE       217 

its  provocation  of  Hawthorne's  Marble  Faun.  His 
Italian  Note-Books  show  how  the  scenes  of  Italy 
were  preparing  him  to  write  the  Romance  of  Monte- 
Beni.  Outside  of  Florence  he  made  the  first  sketch 
for  the  book.  In  the  summer  of  1859  ne  returned 
to  England  to  write  it,  and  chiefly  at  Redcar,  on 
the  Yorkshire  coast,  and  at  Leamington,  the  work 
was  done  in  time  to  be  published  by  March  of 
1860.  The  London  publishers  insisted  upon  giv 
ing  it  the  title  of  Transformation,  against  Haw 
thorne's  wish.  It  was  his  preference  also  not  to 
write  for  the  second  edition  the  "  Conclusion " 
which  is  now  joined  to  the  last  chapter.  But  there 
were  objections  of  vagueness,  and  Hawthorne  was 
willing  to  meet  half-way  the  whimsical  suggestion 
of  Motley  :  "  To  those  who  complain,  I  suppose 
that  nothing  less  than  an  illustrated  edition,  with 
a  large  gallows  on  the  last  page,  with  Donatello  in 
the  most  pensile  of  attitudes — his  ears  revealed 
through  a  white  night-cap  —  would  be  satisfactory." 
When  Longfellow  read  the  book  he  found  "  the 
old,  dull  pain  in  it  that  runs  through  all  Haw 
thorne's  writings,"  but  he  found  it  also  "wonder 
ful  ; "  and  so  did  the  world. 

When  Hawthorne  came  back  to  America  and 
re-established  himself  at  "  Wayside,"  in  1860,  the 
country  stood  on  the  threshold  of  war.  As  a  friend 
of  Pierce  he  was,  to  say  the  least,  not  a  friend  of 
the  Northern  party  which  was  readiest  for  the 


2i8  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

struggle.  But  when  it  began,  the  consciousness 
that  he  had  a  country  stirred  him  to  regret  that  he 
was  too  old  to  carry  a  musket ;  the  compensating 
joy  was  that  his  son  was  too  young.  A  War  Demo 
crat  like  Hawthorne  was  not  precisely  the  person 
from  whom  one  would  expect  an  article  "  Chiefly 
About  War  Matters  "  for  the  vigorously  Northern 
Atlantic  Monthly.  Yet  a  paper  under  this  title, 
signed  "  By  a  Peaceable  Man,"  was  the  result  of  a 
visit  he  paid  to  Washington  in  the  spring  of  1862. 
The  foot-notes  which  accompanied  it  protested 
against  the  disloyalty  of  some  of  the  writer's  words. 
"  Can  it  be  a  son  of  old  Massachusetts  who  utters 
this  abominable  sentiment  ?  For  shame ! "  So 
read  one  of  the  notes,  fairly  typical  of  all.  Donald 
G.  Mitchell  detected  Hawthorne's  touch  in  the 
article,  and  wrote  to  him  as  one  "  ready  to  swear 
at  the  marginal  impertinences.  Pray,  is  Governor 
Andrew  editor  ?  "  The  truth,  revealed  some  years 
later,  was  that  Hawthorne  himself,  requested  by 
James  T.  Fields  to  make  certain  omissions,  had 
made  them,  at  the  same  time  writing  the  foot-notes 
and  befooling  the  public  with  the  remonstrances 
against  himself. 

The  strain  of  the  almost  fatal  illness  of  Una 
Hawthorne  in  Rome  had  seriously  sapped  her 
father's  strength.  Neither  his  physical  condition 
nor  the  mental  state  induced  by  the  war,  was  pro 
pitious  for  literary  production.  Yet  in  the  few 


HAWTHORNE  AT   58. 
From  an  engraving  of  a  photograph  taken  in  Boston. 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE       219 

years  that  followed  his  return  from  Europe  he 
wrote,  in  the  quiet  tower  added  to  the  "  Wayside  " 
house,  the  papers  which  filled  the  volume  of  Our 
Old  Home,,  besides  the  fiction  which  has  been  pub 
lished  since  his  death,  under  the  titles  of  Septimius 
Felton,  The  Dolliver  Romance,  and  Dr.  Grimshaive  s 
Secret.  True  to  a  constant  friendship,  he  insisted, 
against  all  the  protests  of  his  publisher,  upon  dedi 
cating  Our  Old  Home  to  Franklin  Pierce,  whose 
unpopular  name  was  sure  to  excite  hostility  to  the 
book.  However  fully  the  publisher's  fears  were 
borne  out,  Hawthorne's  own  name  is  memorably  the 
brighter  for  his  devotion  to  a  friend.  In  England, 
it  must  be  said,  the  book  gave  other  cause  for 
offence,  in  that  Hawthorne,  speaking  of  the  English 
woman  in  her  riper  age  and  portlier  dimensions, 
made  bold  to  say,  "  You  inevitably  think  of  her  as 
made  up  of  steaks  and  sirloins,"  and  to  venture 
other  remarks  equally  unflattering.  Yet  the  book 
has  not  been  unknown  even  in  recent  years  to  serve 
in  England  the  purpose  to  which  travellers  in  Rome 
sometimes  put  The  Marble  Faun  —  a  prosaic  test, 
if  you  will,  to  apply  to  a  work  which  does  not  make 
utility  its  first  aim. 

Happily  it  is  not  needed  here  to  follow  Haw 
thorne  closely  through  all  the  days  of  failing  strength. 
More  than  a  year  before  the  final  failure  Longfellow 
made  the  record,  "He  looks  gray  and  grand,  with 
something  very  pathetic  about  him."  In  March 


220  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

of  1864  his  health  was  so  broken  that  a  journey  to 
Washington  was  attempted  with  hopes  of  improve 
ment.  His  travelling  companion  was  his  friend 
and  publisher,  William  D.  Ticknor.  Hawthorne 
was  gaining  in  strength,  when,  with  appalling  sud 
denness,  Mr.  Ticknor  died  in  Philadelphia.  In 
stead  of  being  the  object  of  care,  Hawthorne  found 
himself  borne  down  by  the  most  sorrowful  of  re 
sponsibilities.  He  returned  to  Concord  far  worse 
than  he  had  left  it.  This  was  in  April.  In  May 
another  attempt  was  made  to  restore  him  by  means 
of  a  driving  tour  with  Franklin  Pierce  through  the 
White  Mountains.  The  travellers  went  only  as  far 
as  Plymouth,  in  New  Hampshire,  and  here  in  the 
darkness  before  the  sunrise  of  May  19,  death  came 
to  Hawthorne  while  he  slept.  His  burial,  at 
Sleepy  Hollow,  in  Concord,  took  place  on  May  23. 
Within  a  few  days  his  wife,  who  needed  no  human 
consolations,  wrote  with  gladness  :  "  There  can  be  no 
death  nor  loss  for  me  for  evermore.  .  .  .  God  gave 
me  the  rose  of  time ;  the  blossom  of  the  ages  to 
call  my  own  for  twenty-five  years  of  human  life.*' 

The  variety  of  the  attempts  to  apply  epithets  of 
accurate  definition  to  Hawthorne  and  his  writings 
recalls  the  fate  of  a  bust  for  which  he  sat  in 
Rome.  The  clay,  a  good  likeness,  was  finished,  and 
handed  over  to  the  marble-cutters  to  be  reproduced 
in  stone.  While  this  process  was  going  forward  an 
American,  who  might  have  known  better,  directed 


FIELDS,   HAWTHORNE,   AND  TICKNOR. 
From  the  photograph  of  a  Daguerreotype. 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE       221 

the  workmen,  on  his  own  responsibility,  to  make 
certain  changes  in  the  lower  part  of  the  face,  with 
the  result  that  the  finished  bust,  in  the  words  of 
Hawthorne's  son,  "looks  like  a  combination  of 
Daniel  Webster  and  George  Washington."  Some 
thing  like  this  happens  when  words  like  "  glimmer 
ing  "  and  "  cobwebby,"  well  enough  as  far  as  they 
go,  are  too  freely  used  to  describe  the  attributes  of 
Hawthorne.  Different  eyes  see  different  things  in 
his  books,  just  as  the  man  differed  in  the  circles  of 
intimacy  and  of  the  outer  world.  The  remodelled 
bust  doubtless  suited  the  interfering  critic  better 
than  the  truer  likeness.  Mr.  Howells,  when  he 
had  met  the  man  face  to  face,  said,  "  Hawthorne's 
look  was  different  from  that  of  any  picture  of  him 
that  I  have  seen."  And  so  it  may  be  said  of  his 
writings  that  the  terms  used  for  their  definition 
never  quite  define  them.  To  characterise  the  obvi 
ous  is  easy  enough.  But  there  are  personalities  and 
works  of  art  about  which  the  last  word  in  modifica 
tion  of  any  confident  statement  is  far  to  seek.  To 
a  certain  degree  it  defines  them  merely  to  make 
this  assertion  about  them.  Let  us  be  satisfied  with 
making  it  of  Hawthorne  and  of  his  books.  What 
he  is,  in  our  heritage  from  his  pen,  is  immeasurably 
more  important  than  any  words  about  him.  It  is 
enough  that  the  stony  soil  of  New  England  could 
bear  such  fruits  of  the  imagination  as  he  has  gar 
nered  for  our  wonder  and  delight. 


WALT   WHITMAN 

INSTEAD  of  defining  Walt  Whitman  as  an 
"  American  Bookman,"  one  might  with  greater 
justice  describe  him  and  his  Leaves  of  Grass  —  for 
they  are  virtually  one  —  as  an  American  Book  and 
a  Man.  It  is  merely  a  distinction  of  syllables,  yet 
it  has  an  important  significance.  The  precise  signi 
ficance  of  Whitman,  with  relation  to  other  poets, 
has  never  been  more  truly  pointed  out  by  an 
admirer  than  by  Mr.  John  Burroughs  in  these 
words :  "  Just  as  ripe,  mellowed,  storied,  ivy-tow 
ered,  velvet-turfed  England  lies  back  of  Tennyson, 
and  is  vocal  through  him ;  just  as  canny,  cove 
nanting,  conscience-burdened,  craggy,  sharp-tongued 
Scotland  lies  back  of  Carlyle ;  just  as  thrifty,  well- 
schooled,  well-housed,  prudent,  and  moral  New 
England  lies  back  of  her  group  of  poets,  and  is 
voiced  by  them,  —  so  America  as  a  whole,  our  tur 
bulent  democracy,  our  self-glorification,  our  faith 
in  the  future,  our  huge  mass-movements,  our  con 
tinental  spirit,  our  sprawling,  sublime,  and  unkempt 
nature  lie  back  of  Whitman  and  are  implied  by  his 
work." 


WALT   WHITMAN  223 

In  the  life  of  the  man  who  proclaims  himself  the 
mouthpiece  of  these  national  qualities,  it  would  be 
idle  to  look  for  the  circumstances  which  enter  into 
the  making  of  other  men  who  have  made  books, 
since  books  in  any  large  measure  expressive  of 
these  qualities  have  not  hitherto  been  made.  It 
must  not  be  expected,  therefore,  to  follow  him 
through  college  and  foreign  travel,  and  into  friend 
ships  and  domestic  relations  which  make  conspic 
uously  for  what  are  called  the  refinements  of  life. 
He  constantly  spoke  in  his  writings  of  the  "  lit- 
erats  "  as  a  class  distinct  from  himself.  His  book, 
he  maintained,  is  not  to  be  viewed  as  a  literary 
performance,  but  merely  as  an  attempt  to  put  a 
Person  "  freely,  fully,  and  truly  on  record."  This 
person  is  of  course  Walt  Whitman,  not  merely 
Walt  Whitman  the  private  citizen,  but  also  Walt 
Whitman  as  he  conceived  himself,  "  a  great,  com 
posite  democratic  individual,  male  or  female,"  ready 
to  "raise  high  the  perpendicular  hand"  to  every 
person  and  every  experience  to  be  found  on  earth. 
It  is  tne  first  step  toward  any  acceptance  of  Whit 
man  to  accept  him  in  this  double  personality. 
Whether  the  "  composite,  democratic  individual " 
is  or  is  not  a  person  to  one's  liking  in  every  respect, 
the  Leaves  of  Grass  speak  for  him  in  unmistakable 
terms.  For  Walt  Whitman,  the  private  citizen,  his 
life  speaks  with  an  equal  clearness.  There  are  few 
writers  whose  lives  and  whose  writings  are  so  com- 


224  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

pletely  at  one.  It  is  therefore  more  than  commonly 
helpful,  in  arriving  at  a  true  estimate  of  Walt 
Whitman  as  a  writer,  to  gain  a  clear  knowledge 
of  him  as  a  man. 

The  poet  of  democracy  has  need  to  be  born  and 
bred  of  the  people,  and  Whitman  had  all  the  fitness 
for  his  work  which  comes  from  such  a  birth  and 
breeding.  His  father,  Walter  W.  Whitman,  was  a 
skilful  carpenter  and  builder,  living  on  a  farm  which 
his  father  and  grandfather  had  owned  before  him  at 
West  Hills,  Huntington  Township,  Long  Island. 
Here  his  wife,  Louisa  Van  Velsor,  of  a  neighbour 
ing  Dutch  family  of  farmers,  also  long  established 
in  the  region,  and  famed  for  the  raising  of  horses, 
bore  him  a  son,  Walter,  the  second  of  nine  children, 
on  May  Jist,  1819.  To  distinguish  the  boy  from 
his  father,  his  name  was  abbreviated  in  common 
use  to  Walt,  and  its  owner,  except  in  signing  his 
early,  conventional  attempts  at  authorship,  did  not 
permit  the  years  to  restore  the  lost  syllable.  He 
was  not  five  years  old  when  his  family  removed  to 
Brooklyn,  where  he  went  to  the  public  schools,  and 
"  tended "  in  a  lawyer's  and  doctor's  office,  until 
at  the  age  of  fourteen  he  was  set  to  learn  the  print 
er's  trade.  Two  years  of  this  work  were  followed 
by  a  period  of  country-school  teaching  and  "  board 
ing  round  "  in  the  neighbourhood  of  his  birthplace. 
To  this  experience  he  owed  some  of  his  "  deepest 
lessons  in  human  nature  behind  the  scenes  and  in 


LOUISA   (VAN  VELSOR)    WHITMAN,   FROM   A  DAGUERREOTYPE 
TAKEN  ABOUT   1855. 


OP  THE 

UNIVERSITY 


WALT   WHITMAN  225 

the  masses."  Moreover,  he  was  then  at  the  time 
of  life  for  Nature  to  teach  him  her  best  lessons,  and 
the  images  of  sea  and  shore,  which  appear  and  re 
appear  in  his  writings,  show  that  he  learned  them 
well.  In  1839  and  1840  he  is  seen  in  his  native 
town  of  Huntington  as  the  founder  and  publisher 
of  a  weekly  newspaper,  The  Long  Islander.  For 
the  most  part  his  boyhood  and  younger  manhood 
differed  in  few  outward  respects  from  those  of  youths 
who  go  on  to  be  good  mechanics  and  tradesmen,  or 
rural  teachers  and  editors.  Nor  did  the  years  that 
followed  his  return  to  New  York  and  Brooklyn,  in 
1840,  conspicuously  foretell  what  was  to  come. 
Yet  it  was  mainly  in  the  fifteen  years  which  preceded 
the  first  publication  of  Leaves  of  Grass,  in  1855, 
that  Whitman  was  traversing  the  "  long  foreground  " 
into  which  Emerson's  keen  eye  pierced  its  way  when 
the  book  appeared.  The  elements  of  this  foreground 
were  the  permanent  elements  of  Whitman's  thought, 
except  for  the  great  additions  that  were  made  to  it 
by  his  experiences  in  the  civil  war.  Though  his 
productions  in  prose  and  verse  were  printed  in  the 
magazines  of  the  day,  they  were  not  distinguished 
for  individual  merit,  and  he  took  no  uncommon 
place  as  a  writer.  It  was  rather  as  a  compositor 
in  printing-offices,  and  then  as  the  editor  of  a  daily 
paper,  the  Brooklyn  Eagley  that  he  provided  him 
self  with  his  slender  sufficiency  of  money.  It  was 
still  more  as  the  observer  and  sharer  of  the  life 

15 


226  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

about  him  that  he  passed  his  days.  The  spectacles 
of  the  harbour  and  Broadway  were  his  delight. 
The  pilots  on  the  ferry-boats,  in  which  he  crossed 
from  Brooklyn  to  New  York  over  and  over  again 
for  mere  pleasure,  were  his  friends.  Talking  on 
all  manner  of  subjects  with  them,  giving  and  tak 
ing,  lending  a  copy  of  Homer  to  a  youth  who 
swabbed  the  deck,  listening  to  long  accounts  of 
their  work  and  thoughts,  thus  he  passed  whole 
afternoons  and  even  nights.  Of  some  of  these 
friends  he  wrote  at  a  later  time,  "  When  we  meet 
we  kiss  each  other  (I  am  an  exception  to  all  their 
customs  with  others)."  The  drivers  of  the  Broad 
way  stages  were  equally  his  intimates.  Sitting  on 
the  box  beside  them,  their  life  for  the  time  be 
came  his.  One  winter,  in  order  to  keep  a  disabled 
driver's  place  for  him,  he  drove  a  stage  himself. 
To  museums  and  theatres,  and  especially  to  the 
opera,  he  paid  frequent  visits.  Then  there  were 
solitary  days  of  walking,  reading,  and  bathing  at 
the  seashore.  In  all  these  ways  the  multiform  life 
about  him  was  taken  into  himself  and  made  a  living 
part  of  his  own  nature. 

Yet  the  "  foreground "  would  have  been  in 
complete  if  its  horizon  had  not  been  spread  beyond 
that  of  New  York  and  its  vicinity,  for  the  national 
sense  enters  as  strongly  into  Whitman's  complete 
ness  as  the  spirit  of "  Manahatta  my  city."  This 
enlargement  of  view  was  brought  about  in  1 848  and 


WHITMAN   AT   36. 
From  a  Daguerreotype. 


WALT   WHITMAN 


227 


1849  ^7  what  Whitman  called  "  a  leisurely  journey 
and  working  expedition"  with  his  brother  "Jeff" 
through  the  Middle  States,  down  the  Ohio  and 
Mississippi,  to  New  Orleans,  where  he  served  on 
the  editorial  staff  of  The  Crescent.  Thence  he 
returned  by  easy  stages  up  the  Mississippi  and 
Missouri,  and  home  by  the  way  of  the  Great  Lakes 
and  Lower  Canada.  Back  in  Brooklyn  in  1850, 
he  published  and  edited  The.  Freeman,  a  newspaper 
of  his  own,  for  about  two  years,  after  which  he 
undertook  the  business  of  building  and  selling  small 
houses.  It  seems  to  have  been  the  danger  of  grow 
ing  rich  that  made  him  abandon  this  enterprise. 

Still  one  important  elerrient  seems  needed  to 
complete  the  foreground  for  Leaves  of  Grass  —  an 
active  personal  share,  more  than  the  portion  of  a 
mere  observer,  in  many  expressions  of  man's  physi 
cal  nature.  The  testimony  of  Whitman's  friends 
is  that  he  was  essentially  a  temperate  man  in  all 
respects.  If  in  the  years  from  1840  to  1855  "he 
sounded  all  experiences  of  life,"  as  one  well- 
accredited  biographer  has  said,  he  was  not  one 
to  disown  his  conduct,  for  he  empowered  John 
Addington  Symonds  to  publish  his  statement : 
"  My  life,  young  manhood,  mid-age,  times  South, 
etc.,  have  been  jolly  bodily,  and  doubtless  open  to 
criticism."  It  would  be  no  less  misleading,  in  con 
sidering  Whitman,  to  withhold  these  facts  than  to 
interpret  them  in  the  light  of  his  poems  without 


228  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

remembering  that  Walt  Whitman  the  individual 
and  Walt  Whitman  in  his  imagined  life  of  "  the 
average  man  "  are  at  many  points  distinct  person 
alities.  It  is  in  his  personality  of  the  average  man 
that  he  changes  the  old  saying,  £C  There,  but  for  the 
grace  of  God,  goes  John  Newton,"  into  the  new 
and  unqualified,  "  There  goes  Walt  Whitman." 

We  are  told  that  the  purpose  of  Leaves  of  Grass 
formed  itself  in  Whitman's  mind  early  in  the  fifties, 
and  that  in  1854  he  began  putting  on  paper  the 
twelve  poems  which  made  up  the  book,  published 
as  a  thin  quarto  in  1855.  It  is  worth  while  to 
bring  together  two  statements  concerning  him  and 
his  work  at  this  precise  time.  One  of  his  brothers 
makes  the  report :  "  Walt  did  not  always  dress  in 
this  present  style.  He  was  rather  stylish  when 
young.  He  started  in  with  his  new  notions  "some 
where  between  1850-55."  So  much  for  the  adop 
tion  of  the  unconventional  costume  which  marked 
him  from  this  time  forth.  Concerning  the  mode  of 
utterance  which  he  adopted  at  the  same  time,  his 
own  words  are :  cc  I  had  great  trouble  in  leaving 
out  the  stock  c  poetical '  touches,  but  succeeded  at 
last."  His  own  conception' of  his  work  and  the  best 
way  to  do  it  was  clear  to  him,  and  he  squarely 
faced  what  seemed  to  be  demanded  of  him.  His 
warmest  admirers  in  later  years  are  tempted  to 
regard  as  fools  and  blind  all  those  who  did  not 
immediately  put  a  high  value  upon  his  book.  Yet 


T</-*i 

leaves  of 


i 


COVERS  OF   WHITMAN'S    OWN    COPY  OF    THE   FIRST  EDITION    OF 


WALT    WHITMAN  229 

it  was  no  more  strange  that  it  met  with  hostility 
than  that  "  the  average  person,"  utterly  ignorant  of 
Wagner  and  his  intentions,  should  not  rejoice  in  a 
first  hearing  of  the  most  "  Wagnerian  "  portions  of 
Tristan  and  Isolde,  or  that  another  person  quite 
unacquainted  with  impressionist  art  should  experi 
ence  scant  pleasure  in  finding  himself  in  a  room  full 
of  Monet's  pictures.  Whitman's  very  themes,  re 
garded  in  the  light  in  which  he  saw  them,  forbade 
a  cordial  welcome.  "  The  main  objects  of  his  enthu 
siasm  "  have  been  defined  by  Symonds  as  "  America, 
Self,  Sex,  the  People."  To  treat  these  themes  in  a 
series  of  "  slack-twisted  "  dithyrambic  chants,  ap 
parently  flying  in  the  face  of  all  poetic  tradition,  and 
written  with  a  frankness  and  egotism  and  lack  of 
humour  which,  after  forty  years  of  Whitman  "  in 
the  air,"  are  still  detested  by  many,  was  inevitably 
to  court  the  opposition  of  "  persons  of  taste."  The 
critics  representing  these  persons  fell  upon  the  book 
with  a  savage  fury.  The  writer  of  it  was  "  a 
beast;"  he  "should  be  kicked  from  all  decent 
society."  To  one  London  journal  he  appeared  as 
"  a  wild  Tupper  of  the  West ; "  another,  comment 
ing  upon  a  later  edition,  declared :  "  Of  all  writers 
we  have  perused,  Walt  Whitman  is  the  most  silly, 
the  most  blasphemous,  and  the  most  disgusting." 
The  bitterest  condemnations  of  the  book  were  due 
to  its  many  offences  against  "  the  proprieties." 
Most  men  could  not  possibly  take  its  unfamiliar 


2jo  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

point  of  view  immediately.  After  many  years  the 
New  York  Tribune  echoed  but  faintly  the  first 
voices  of  denunciation  when  it  said :  "  The  chief 
question  raised  by  this  publication  is  whether 
anybody  —  even  a  poet  —  ought  to  take  off  his 
trousers  in  the  market-place." 

Such  were  the  views  most  commonly  held  regard 
ing  the  Leaves  of  Grass.  But  there  were  those, 
neither  fools  nor  blind,  who  saw  many  other  things 
in  the  book.  In  England,  where  Whitman  has 
found  many  of  his  best  admirers,  a  prompt  word  of 
appreciation  was  spoken  by  Richard  Monckton 
Milnes  (not  yet  Lord  Houghton),  in  a  letter  to 
Hawthorne  at  the  Liverpool  consulate :  "  I  wanted 
to  see  you  mainly  for  your  own  sake,  and  also  to 
ask  you  about  an  American  book  which  has  fallen 
into  my  hands.  It  is  called  Leaves  of  Grass,  and 
the  author  calls  himself  Walt  Whitman.  Do  you 
know  anything  about  him  ?  I  will  not  call  it  poetry, 
because  I  am  unwilling  to  apply  that  word  to  a  work 
totally  destitute  of  art ;  but,  whatever  we  call  it,  it 
is  a  most  notable  and  true  book.  It  is  not  written 
virginibus  puerlsque ;  but  as  I  am  neither  the  one  nor 
the  other,  I  may  express  my  admiration  of  its  vigor 
ous  virility  and  bold,  natural  truth.  There  are 
things  in  it  that  read  like  the  old  Greek  plays.  It 
is  of  the  same  family  as  those  delightful  books  of 
Thoreau's  which  you  introduced  me  to,  and  which 
are  so  little  known  and  valued  here."  In  America 


LEAVES  OF   GRASS,"   WITH    AUTOGRAPH    NOTES    AND    OTHER   MEMORANDA. 


WALT   WHITMAN  231 

Whitman  had  the  satisfaction  of  winning  at  once 
the  highest  opinion  of  the  man  whose  good  opinion 
was  worth  most  at  the  time  —  namely,  Emerson. 
It  is  said  that  Whitman  knew  nothing  of  Emerson's 
writings  before  producing  the  Leaves  of  Grass,  yet 
if  Emerson  had  withheld  his  hand  from  one  whose 
practice  so  conspicuously  reflected  his  own  preaching 
of  the  gospel  of  individuality,  this  preaching  would 
have  seemed  a  mockery.  Wide  as  the  gulf  between 
the  two  men  must  have  appeared,  Emerson  took 
no  account  of  it  when  he  handed  a  copy  of  Whit 
man's  book  to  a  friend  and  said,  "  Americans 
abroad  may  now  come  home :  unto  us  a  man  is 
born."  He  sent  a  copy  of  the  book  to  Carlyle,  not 
without  misgivings,  calling  it  "  a  nondescript  mon 
ster,  which  yet  had  terrible  eyes  and  buffalo  strength, 
and  was  indisputably  American ; "  and  he  added, 
"  after  you  have  looked  into  it,  if  you  think,  as  you 
may,  that  it  is  only  an  auctioneer's  inventory  of  a 
warehouse,  you  can  light  your  pipe  with  it."  There 
were  no  misgivings,  however,  in  the  words  of  thanks 
which  he  sent  to  Whitman  himself  for  his  gift  of 
the  book.  "  I  find  it  the  most  extraordinary  piece 
of  wit  and  wisdom  that  America  has  yet  contributed. 
...  I  find  incomparable  things  said  incomparably 
well,  as  they  must  be.  ...  I  greet  you  at  the  be 
ginning  of  a  great  career,  which  must  yet  have  had  a 
long  foreground  somewhere,  for  such  a  start."  With 
a  letter  in  his  pocket  from  Emerson  saying  such 


232  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

words  as  these,  Whitman,  though  needing  no  confi 
dence  but  his  own,  could  well  afford  to  write, 
"Why  should  I  hurry  or  compromise?"  From 
the  general  storm  of  abuse  which  greeted  his  book, 
he  did  shield  and  recover  himself  in  the  summer 
and  autumn  of  1855  by  going  to  the  east  end  of 
Long  Island.  When  he  came  back  to  New  York 
it  was,  he  said,  "  with  the  confirmed  resolution  to  go 
on  with  my  poetic  enterprise  in  my  own  way,  and 
finish  it  as  well  as  I  could." 

The  carrying  out  of  this  enterprise  was  Whitman's 
work  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  for  even  his  vivid  share 
in  the  life  of  the  war  time  may  be  'regarded  in  the 
closest  relation  with  his  poetic  purpose.  It  is  not 
possible  here  to  follow  the  book  through  all  its  for 
tunes  and  misfortunes  of  successive  editions  and 
gradual  growth.  When  the  second  edition  appeared 
in  1856,  Emerson  had  good  reason  to  be  annoyed 
at  finding  his  sentence,  "  I  greet  you  at  the  begin 
ning  of  a  great  career,"  printed  in  letters  of  gold 
over  his  name  on  the  back  of  the  volume.  But  he 
had  the  good  sense  to  know  that  the  standards  of 
taste  in  Whitman's  Brooklyn v  were  different  from 
those  of  his  own  Concord,  and  when  Whitman  came 
to  Boston,  in  1860,  to  superintend  the  issue  of  his 
third  edition,  Emerson  took  so  great  an  interest  in 
the  undertaking  that  he  walked  for  two  hours  up 
and  down  the  Beacon  Street  mall  of  the  Common, 
arguing  with  Whitman  for  the  omission  of  many 


WHITMAN   IN   WAR-TIME. 
From  a  photograph  by  Gardner,  Washington. 


WALT   WHITMAN  233 

things  in  the  "  Children  of  Adam  "  poems.  Whit 
man  listened  without  contention,  knowing,  as  he 
said,  "  I  could  never  hear  the  points  better  put  — 
and  then  I  felt  down  in  my  soul  the  clear  and  un 
mistakable  conviction  to  disobey  all,  and  pursue 
my  own  way."  When  the  seventh  edition  of  the 
poems  was  brought  out  in  Boston,  in  1881,  the 
threat  of  official  prosecution,  on  the  ground  of 
the  objections  urged  by  Emerson,  caused  the  publish 
ers,  who  had  known  well  what  they  were  doing,  to 
abandon  the  book  with  incontinent  haste.  But 
publishers  in  Philadelphia  were  not  slow  to  take  it 
up,  and  after  growing  year  by  year,  until  Whitman's 
death,  the  book  has  returned  to  Boston,  committed 
by  the  literary  executors  of  the  author  to  a  young 
house  which  has  made  Whitman  its  first  enterprise. 
It  has  been  the  present  writer's  fortune  to  see 
a  few  of  the  many  note-books  —  simple,  home 
made  things  —  in  which  Whitman  jotted  down  his 
thoughts,  and  entered  words  and  phrases  that  took 
his  fancy,  with  their  meanings  and  derivations. 
Here  may  be  found  such  favourite  terms  of  his  own 
as  "  kosmos  "  and  "  literat "  and  "  rondure,"  noted 
with  a  carefulness  that  would  have  seemed  almost 
superfluous  for  a  man  without  a  certain  conscious 
ness  that  he  was  conducting  his  own  education. 
Here  the  sentences  which  from  time  to  time  found 
their  way  into  his  chants  are  marked  off  as  of  no 
further  use.  We  are  told  that  these  note-books 


U 

O 


WALT   WHITMAN  235 

were  always  with  him,  and  that  writing  more  liter 
ally  with  "  his  eye  on  the  object "  than  most  poets, 
his  thoughts  were  put  into  their  first  form  wherever 
he  might  happen  to  be.  That  their  final  form  was 
the  result  of  offhand  work  is  a  mistaken  idea,  for  his 
manuscripts  often  show  with  what  careful  elaboration 
his  lines  were  wrought.  Mr.  Stedman  has  called  him 
"  more  formal  than  others  in  his  non-conformity, 
and  haughtier  in  his  plainness  than  many  in  their 
pride."  Certainly  it  is  not  without  suggestion  that 
the  title  which  he  chose  for  his  first  book  defined 
all  his  subsequent  work  not  in  prose,  and  remains 
as  the  title  of  all  that  he  did  through  nearly  forty 
years.  Few  writers  have  maintained  an  identity  so 
unvarying,  so  sure  of  its  right  to  permanence. 
Time  somewhat  mellowed  and  broadened  its  expres 
sion.  At  first  his  cry  was,  cc  I  sound  my  barbaric 
yawp  over  the  roofs  of  the  world."  Later  it  became, 
"  Over  the  tree-tops  I  float  thee  a  song."  But  this 
was  in  his  threnody  for  Lincoln,  and  the  events  of 
which  Lincoln  was  the  centre  were  the  chief  influ 
ences  that  brought  the  man  and  the  poet  to  com 
pleteness. 

To  understand  the  effect  of  the  war  in  widening 
his  poetic  scope,  national  and  human,  it  is  necessary 
only  to  see  how  his  life  tallied  with  it — if  one  of  his 
own  words  may  be  used.  When  his  brother  George, 
afterward  lieutenant-colonel  in  his  New  York  regi 
ment,  was  wounded  at  Fredericksburg,  in  1862, 


236  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

Whitman,  at  an  hour's  notice,  started  from  Brook 
lyn  to  care  for  him.  His  wound  was  not  severe, 
and  the  new-comer  at  the  front  soon  found  himself 
in  Washington  caring  for  other  Brooklyn  soldiers 
sent  thither  from  camp  in  his  charge.  Gradually 
this  care-taking  extended  itself  to  wounded  soldiers 
in  general,  from  both  sides,  in  the  army  hospitals 
chiefly  in  Washington.  In  this  capacity,  rather  of 
comforter  than  of  nurse,  Whitman  gave  of  his  best 
to  the  soldiers  till  the  war  was  over.  No  man  could 
have  been  better  qualified  for  such  a  task.  His 
habit  of  life  had  made  him  the  comrade  of  all, 
especially  the  obscure.  *  Unmarried  —  through  an 
"  overmastering  passion,"  as  he  said,  "  for  entire 
freedom,  unconstraint "  —  he  was  checked  by  none 
of  the  ties  which  bind  other  men  from  holding  their 
lives  cheap.  Blessed  with  a  feminine  gift  of  sym 
pathy,  which  made  children  and  weak  persons  in 
stinctively  trust  in  him,  his  touch  and  word  were 
often  what  the  wounded  men  needed  most.  His 
very  physical  presence  was  comforting.  When 
Lincoln,  looking  from  the  White  House  window, 
saw  Whitman  pass,  his  word  was,  "  Well,  he  looks 
like  a  man  !  "  Six  feet  in  height,  of  vigorous  mould 
and  carriage,  ruddy  of  skin,  bearded  and  gray  of 
hair  since  thirty,  given  to  frequent  baths,  the  clean 
est  linen  and  simple  clothes,  he  carried  about  with 
him  an  air  of  health  and  sunlight.  By  friends  in 
Northern  cities  he  was  supplied  with  the  means  for 


WHITMAN  AT  65. 
From  a  photograph. 


WALT   WHITMAN  237 

bringing  more  tangible  things  to  the  hospitals.  A 
friend  who  once  went  his  rounds  with  him  has  told 
of  what  he  saw,  and  a  part  of  the  record  must  speak 
for  the  whole  of  a  beneficent  service,  a  personal 
ministration,  it  has  been  estimated,  to  about  one 
hundred  thousand  men.  "  From  cot  to  cot  they 
called  him,  often  in  tremulous  tones  or  in  whispers ; 
they  embraced  him  ;  they  touched  his  hand  ;  they 
gazed  at  him.  To  one  he  gave  a  few  words  of 
cheer ;  for  another  he  wrote  a  letter  home ;  to  others 
he  gave  an  orange,  a  few  comfits,  a  cigar,  a  pipe  and 
tobacco,  a  sheet  of  paper  or  a  postage-stamp,  all  of 
which  and  many  other  things  were  in  his  capacious 
haversack.  From  another  he  would  receive  a  dying 
message  for  mother,  wife,  or  sweetheart ;  for  another 
he  would  promise  to  go  an  errand;  to  another, 
some  special  friend  very  low,  he  would  give  a  manly 
farewell  kiss.  He  did  the  things  for  them  no  nurse 
or  doctor  could  do,  and  he  seemed  to  leave  a  bene 
diction  at  every  cot  as  he  passed  along.  The  lights 
had  gleamed  for  hours  in  the  hospital  that  night 
before  he  left  it,  and  as  he  took  his  way  towards  the 
door,  you  could  hear  the  voices  of  many  a  stricken 
hero  calling, c  Walt,  Walt,  Walt,  come  again  !  Come 
again!'" 

Before  the  war  was  over  Whitman  had  the  first 
illness  of  his  life,  an  attack  of  "  hospital  malaria," 
induced  by  his  labours,  which  converted  him  from  a 
young  into  an  old  man.  But  the  illness  kept  him 


238  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

only  a  short  time  from  the  hospitals,  where  all  the 
hours  which  he  could  spare  from  his  new  clerkship 
in  the  Department  of  the  Interior  were  spent.  This 
clerkship  itself  was  short-lived,  by  reason  of  his  dis 
missal  as  the  author  of  Leaves  of  Grass.  The  incident 
brought  forth  W.  D.  O'Connor's  flaming  pamphlet, 
The  Good  Gray  Poef,  which  provided  Whitman  with 
a  permanent  name  better  than  anything  he  had  lost. 
Another  clerkship  in  the  office  of  the  Attorney- 
General  was  promptly  secured,  and  there  he  worked 
till  1873,  when  an  attack  of  paralysis,  which  had  its 
first  cause  in  his  hospital  service,  incapacitated  him 
for  all  regular  labour.  Thenceforth,  until  his  death, 
on  March  26th,  1892,  he  lived  in  Camden,  New 
Jersey,  in  health  of  varying  feebleness.  At  its  best 
it  permitted  him  to  go  about  freely  in  the  world,  as 
in  his  journeys  to  Colorado  and  Canada.  At  its 
worst,  it  rendered  him  almost  helpless.  Yet  his 
good  cheer  and  courage  never  failed  him.  Living 
in  one  of  the  simplest  houses  in  an  unpretentious 
district,  rejoicing,  as  of  old,  in  the  life  of  the  ferries 
and  the  streets,  and  in  all  the  aspects  of  nature, 
cared  for  by  devoted  friends,  who  gave  him,  among 
other  things,  a  horse  and  buggy  of  his  own,  hon 
oured  by  the  recognition  of  the  masters  in  literature, 
as  the  letters  from  Tennyson  alone  are  enough  to 
show,  writing  in  prose  the  Specimen  Days,  which 
Symonds  called  "  the  brightest  and  halest  c  Diary  of 
an  Invalid'  ever  written,"  and  singing  in  verse  the 


WHITMAN   AND  Two   LITTLE  FRIENDS. 
From  a  photograph  taken  by  Kurtz,  New  York,  1880. 


OP  TH* 

UKIVERSITT 


WALT   WHITMAN  239 

ripened  songs  of  one  who  has  seen  and  suffered 
much,  Whitman  lived  his  old  age  so  as  to  blur  in 
no  wise  the  picture  of  his  life,  but  to  work  its  ful 
filment. 

After  all  has  been  said  about  Whitman,  there  are 
good  folk  who  ask,  "  But  is  not  the  whole  Whit 
man  attitude  a  monstrous  pose  ?  Why  should  cata 
logues  be  considered  poetry  ?  Why  must  all  things 
be  thought  equally  worthy  of  honour?  Are  the 
graces  of  humility,  reverence,  and  proportion  obso 
lete,  that  they  should  be  thrown  to  the  winds  ? 
This  Whitman  brings  us  no  new  discoveries,  or 
very  few  —  but  barbarous  declamation  of  common 
place  in  plenty  :  why  should  we  listen  to  him  ? " 

It  is  quite  possible  that  for  many  persons  these 
honest  questions  cannot  be  satisfactorily  answered. 
The  Whitmaniacs,  as  the  renegade  admirer  Swin 
burne  called  Whitman's  followers,  sometimes  an 
swer  such  inquiries  with  a  heat  which  is  meant  to 
warm,  but  burns  instead.  It  would  be  idle  to  tell 
all  men  that  they  must  accept  Whitman  entire  or 
not  at  all.  He  has  been  called  cc  an  acquired 
taste  "  —  and  surely  he  yields  to  those  who  turn  to 
him  something  different  from  that  which  other  poets 
give ;  yet  he  need  not  displace,  but  supplement 
them.  The  things  which  most  open-minded  read 
ers  who  turn  to  Whitman  can  accept  and  rejoice  in 
are  his  large  enthusiasm  for  mankind,  especially  in 
"these  States,"  whose  national  spirit  he  utters  as 


24o  AMERICAN   BOOKMEN 

no  one  else  has  done ;  his  elemental  scorn,  such  as 
a  cloud  or  a  north  wind  might  hold,  for  all  but  the 
real  things ;  his  faith  and  hope  and  love.  With 
these  watchwords  he  sets  free  the  spirit  which  can 
respond  to  him,  and  accomplishes  his  definite  pur 
pose,  of  which  he  wrote  :  "  The  reader  will  have  his 
or  her  part  to  do,  just  as  much  as  I  have  had  mine. 
I  seek  less  to  state  or  display  any  theme  or  thought, 
and  more  to  bring  you,  reader,  into  the  atmosphere 
of  the  theme  or  thought  —  there  to  pursue  your 
own  flight." 

Persons  of  a  casual  temper  read  a  page  or  two  of 
Whitman,  and,  ignorant  of  the  truth  set  forth  by 
Stevenson,  that  "  no  one  can  appreciate  Whitman's 
excellences  until  he  has  grown  accustomed  to  his 
faults,"  find  it  easy  to  toss  him  aside  as  an  offender 
against  all  preconceived  ideas  of  poetry,  and  there 
fore  not  a  poet.  It  would  be  less  easy  for  these 
persons  to  explain  the  effect  his  writings  have  had 
upon  men  and  women  whom  they  do  not  so  readily 
dismiss.  It  is  not  necessary  to  enumerate  the 
names  of  all  his  earlier  and  later  admirers,  at  home 
and  abroad.  It  is,  however,  worth  while  to  repeat 
the  deliberate  statement  of  John  Addington  Sy- 
monds,  surely  a  critical  voice  worth  heeding : 
"  Leaves  of  Grass,  which  I  first  read  at  the  age  of 
twenty-five,  influenced  me  more,  perhaps,  than  any 
other  book  has  done,  except  the  Bible ;  more  than 
Plato,  more  than  Goethe."  If  this  was  a  personal 


TOMB  AT  HARLEIGH,   CAMDEN,   N.  J. 
Built  under  Whitman's  supervision. 


or  TUB 

UNIVERSITY 


WALT   WHITMAN  241 

rather  than  a  critical  estimate,  a  value  of  its  own 
may  be  attached  to  his  statement :  that  he  was  will 
ing  to  pledge  his  reputation  as  a  critic  on  the  opin 
ion  that  Whitman  produced  not  only  poetry,  but 
"  poetry  of  a  very  high  order."  Nor  has  the  prophet 
been  without  honour  in  his  own  country,  for  the 
last  and  least  faltering  voice  in  his  praise  has  been 
uplifted  in  a  book,  which  confesses  itself  at  the 
outset  a  panegyric,  by  Mr.  John  Burroughs,  whose 
standards  are  pre-eminently  those  of  sanity  and 
nature. 

"I  charge  you  forever  reject  those  who  would  expound  me,  for  I 
cannot  expound  myself." 

This  was  Whitman's  command,  and  it  cannot  be 
said  that  his  disciples  have  literally  obeyed  it,  or  that 
he  has  never  tried  to  expound  himself.  His  own 
prose  paper,  A  Backward  Glance  O'er  Travel* d  Roads, 
is  in  effect  an  exposition.  His  biographer,  Dr.  R. 
M.  Bucke,  who  is  also  one  of  his  literary  executors, 
and  yet  another  of  these,  Mr.  Horace  L.  Traubel, 
have  written  many  pages  which  really  serve  to  clarify 
the  understanding  of  Walt  Whitman  and  his  book. 
Whether  men  call  him  a  poet  or  a  prophet  or  "  a 
great  composite,  democratic  individual,"  he  is  a 
figure  which  refuses  to  be  passed  by  in  the  records 
of  American  letters ;  and  the  truest  exposition  of 
him,  after  all,  is  to  be  found  in  the  Leaves  of  Grass 
itself. 

16 


WHITTIER   AND    LOWELL 

THE  scholar  in  politics  is  familiar  enough  in 
other  lands,  but  here  he  has  never  quite  lost 
a  certain  strangeness  of  aspect.  The  poet  in  poli 
tics  is  almost  an  anomaly  everywhere,  and  if  any 
justification  were  needed  for  bringing  together  the 
names  of  Whittier  and  Lowell,  it  would  be  found 
in  the  fact  that  they  won  their  first  conspicuous 
laurels  in  devoting  their  Muse  to  the  service  of  a 
political  cause.  This  fact  alone  distinguishes  them 
from  their  fellows  in  American  letters. 

When  all  the  writers  of  the  older  generation 
were  young  men,  the  country  was  richer  than  it  is 
now  in  "  moral  issues."  The  problems  of  national 
life  provided  every  man  with  food  for  searching 
thought.  Its  themes  were  not  essentially  poetical, 
except  in  so  far  as  human  freedom  and  the  freed 
spirit  of  poetry  are  at  one.  A  freed  spirit  of  opinion 
was  indispensable  to  him  who  would  espouse  the 
cause  to  which  Whittier  and  Lowell  gave  their 
young  vigour,  the  cause  of  antislavery.  All  the 
forces  of  conservatism,  North  and  South,  were 
arrayed  against  it,  and  to  array  one's  self  unequivo- 


WHITTIER   AND    LOWELL        243 

cally  on  its  side  required  a  courage  quite  unneeded 
for  partisanship  in  the  political  issues  known  to  our 
day. 

The  question  of  slavery  ceased  so  long  ago  to  be 
a  question  at  all,  that  it  is  well-nigh  impossible  for 
the  younger  generation  to-day  to  acquire  the  point  of 
view  in  which  the  opponents  of  the  institution  were 
once  regarded  very  much  as  anarchists  and  social 
outlaws.  It  has  been  well  said  by  Professor  Wen 
dell  :  "  Perhaps  the  closest  analogy  which  we  can 
imagine  to-day  to  the  Abolitionists  of  1833  would 
be  a  body  of  earnest.  God-fearing  men  who  should 
be  convinced  that  God  bade  them  cry  out  against 
the  institution  of  marriage."  Indeed,  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  such  a  body  of  men  would  not  be 
held  in  greater  tolerance  to-day,  at  least  so  far  as  their 
writings  and  their  persons  are  concerned.  As  late 
as  1 842  it  was  thus  that  Longfellow's  slender  pam 
phlet  of  Poems  on  Slavery  was  received  by  Graham  s 
Magazine,  then  one  of  the  leading  literary  periodicals 
of  the  country  :  the  editor  printed  a  guarded  notice 
of  it,  and  justified  himself  by  writing  to  Longfellow 
that  "  the  word  slavery  was  never  allowed  to  appear 
in  a  Philadelphia  periodical,  and  the  publisher  ob 
jected  to  have  even  the  name  of  the  book  appear  in 
his  pages."  In  person,  moreover,  the  antislavery 
men  were  far  less  safe  than  on  paper.  In  1835 
Whittier,  in  company  with  George  Thompson,  an 
English  Abolitionist,  was  mobbed  in  Concord,  New 


244  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

Hampshire.  For  Thompson's  ears  three  thousand 
dollars  were  offered  in  one  place ;  in  New  Orleans 
a  purse  of  twenty  thousand  dollars  was  publicly 
made  up  as  a  reward  for  his  person.  When  he  was 
to  lecture  in  Boston  a  vessel  was  waiting  to  carry 
him  to  the  South,  if  the  following  placard,  posted 
all  over  the  town,  should  result  in  his  seizure :  — 

THOMPSON,  THE  ABOLITIONIST. 

u  That  infamous  foreign  scoundrel,  Thompson,  will 
hold  forth  this  afternoon  at  the  Liberator  Office,  No.  48, 
Washington  Street.  The  present  is  a  fair  opportunity  for 
the  friends  of  the  Union  to  snake  Thompson  out.  It  will 
be  a  contest  between  the  Abolitionists  and  the  friends  of 
the  Union.  A  purse  of  one  hundred  dollars  has  been  raised 
by  a  number  of  patriotic  citizens  to  reward  the  individual 
who  shall  first  lay  violent  hands  on  Thompson,  so  that  he 
may  be  brought  to  the  tar-kettle  before  dark.  Friends  of 
the  Union,  be  vigilant !  " 

It  would  be  easily  possible  to  multiply  illustra 
tions  of  the  sentiment  which  the  opponents  of  slav 
ery  had  to  face,  and  even  to  show  that  the 
influences  from  which  the  strongest  help  might 
have  been  expected  —  the  church,  the  press,  and 
respectable  private  opinion  —  were  the  last  to  exert 
themselves  in  favour  of  the  views  which  were 
finally  to  prevail.  But  it  is  needed  here  merely 
to  indicate  the  strenuousness  of  the  cause  which 
brought  Lowell  and  Whittier  to  stand  for  an  im- 


OF  THB 

UNIVERSITY 


WHITTIER   AND    LOWELL        245 

portant  period  of  their  lives  upon  common  ground. 
Their  approach  to  this  ground  and  their  departure 
from  it  were  by  utterly  different  routes,  and  the 
ultimate  place  they  have  attained  is  remote,  in  a 
greater  and  less  degree,  from  that  of  partisans  in 
any  cause.  Yet  what  they  brought  to  the  national 
problem,  found  in  it,  and  carried  away  from  it, 
might  well  form  the  -basis  for  a  comparative  study 
of  their  lives.  This  account  of  them  would  exceed 
all  bounds  if  it  should  attempt  such  a  study.  So 
abundant,  indeed,  are  the  records  of  the  lives  of  these 
two  men,  that  it  is  hardly  fair  to  the  reader  to  assume 
that  the  details  need  to  be  repeated  with  any  minute 
ness.  Perhaps  he  will  prefer  to  be  reminded  of 
certain  salient  points,  and  to  this  end  will  not  be 
unwilling  to  regard  Whittier  and  Lowell  at  several 
separated  periods  of  their  careers. 

The  life  of  John  Greenleaf  Whittier  was  not  lack 
ing  in  picturesque  moments.  From  those  of  his 
boyhood  may  be  chosen  one  in  the  nineteenth  year 
from  his  birth  at  Haverhill,  Mass.,  on  December 
iyth,  1807.  On  a  summer  day  of  1826  he  was 
mending  a  wall  by  the  roadside  with  his  father, 
when  the  postman,  riding  past,  threw  him  a  copy  of 
the  weekly  Free  Press  of  Newburyport.  The  boy 
opened  it,  and  stood  spellbound  at  the  sight  of 
some  verses  of  his  own  in  the  "  Poet's  Corner." 
Without  his  knowledge  they  had  been  sent  to  the 
paper  by  his  elder  sister,  who  did  not  share  her 


246  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

father's  opinion  that  Greenleaf's  habit  of  verse- 
making  was  wholly  wasteful  of  precious  time. 
When  he  was  about  fourteen,  good  fortune  had  put 
a  copy  of  Burns  into  his  hands,  and  the  New  Eng 
land  boy's  response,  like  the  New  England  poet's 
constant  allegiance,  to  the  Scottish  singer  marked 
an  essential  sympathy  in  their  natures,  underlying 
the  conspicuous  contrasts  in  their  lives.  If  one 
youth  on  a  farm  could  make  verses,  why  not  an 
other,  Whittier  must  have  asked  himself,  and  from 
that  time  forward  many  of  the  moments  he  could 
spare  from  his  farmwork  and  rustic  schooling  were 
given  to  the  trial  of  his  own  wings.  So  strenuous 
were  the  inheritances  and  surroundings  of  the 
Quaker  household  into  which  he  was  born  that  the 
gentler  impulses  of  poetic  musing  might  easily  have 
been  checked,  but  for  that  blending  of  gentleness 
with  strenuousness  which  is  the  birthright  of 
Friends.  In  Whittier  himself  the  qualities  were 
so  notably  blended,  that  there  was  a  special  fitness 
in  his  bearing  the  name  of  Greenleaf,  transmitted 
from  a  Huguenot  ancestor,  on  whose  coat-of-arms 
both  a  warrior's  helmet  and  a  dove  bearing  an  olive 
branch  are  said  to  have  figured.  To  the  strenuous 
cause  of  antislavery,  therefore,  Whittier  brought  so 
excellently  tempered  an  inheritance,  that  he  has 
been  justly  called  "  perhaps  the  least  irritating  of 
reformers."  The  relation  between  the  antislavery 
cause  and  those  early  printed  verses,  at  which  he 


WHITTIER  AT   29. 
After  a  painting  by  Bass  Otis. 


WHITTIER   AND    LOWELL        247 

stared  speechless  until  his  father  impatiently  bade 
him  keep  at  his  work,  is  not  remote,  for  the  editor 
of  the  Free  Press,  who  soon  sought  out  his  young 
contributor,  and  urged  the  cultivation  of  his  talents, 
was  none  other  than  his  lifelong  friend  and  fellow- 
worker,  William  Lloyd  Garrison. 

Twelve  years  after  this  first  recognition  of  his 
promise  Whittier  was  to  be  seen  under  strangely 
different  circumstances.  In  May  of  1838  a  mob 
in  Philadelphia  attacked  and  burned  "  Pennsylvania 
Hall,"  a  building  erected,  at  the  cost  of  more  than 
forty  thousand  dollars,  as  the  headquarters  for  work 
on  behalf  of  civil  liberty.  Whittier  at  the  time 
was  the  editor  of  an  anti-slavery  journal,  the  Penn 
sylvania  Freeman,  which  had  its  office  in  the  Hall. 
Knowing  well  that  if  he  were  seen  in  the  crowd  in 
his  proper  person  he  would  suffer  violence  without 
attaining  his  purpose,  he  changed  his  ordinary 
Quaker  aspect  by  putting  on  a  wig  and  a  long 
white  overcoat,  and,  joining  the  mob  which  was  sack 
ing  his  office,  saved  as  many  of  his  papers  as  he 
could.  The  editors  of  antislavery  papers  were  not 
all  unused  to  seeing  their  presses  shattered  and  their 
type  thrown  into  the  street  or  river.  Whittier  him 
self,  in  his  own  New  England,  had  narrowly  escaped 
tar  and  feathers.  Mud,  stones,  sticks,  and  eggs  of 
the  age  which  qualifies  them  as  missiles  he  had  not 
escaped.  But  before  joining  his  fortunes  with  those 
of  antislavery  he  had  deliberately  counted  the  cost. 


248  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

In  later  life  he  advised  a  boy,  "if  thou  wouldst 
win  success,  join  thyself  to  some  unpopular,  but 
noble  cause."  The  giving  of  advice,  however,  is  a 
different  thing  from  courting  the  experience  which 
prompts  it,  and  what  the  embracing  of  an  "  unpop 
ular,  but  noble  cause  "  meant  to  Whittier  was  the 
strict  limitation  of  high  political  ambitions.  The 
varied  editorial  experiences,  in  Boston,  Hartford, 
and  Haverhill,  which  followed  the  short  term  of 
study  after  the  discovery  of  his  talents  by  Garrison, 
gave  him  good  reason  to  think  that  he  might  excel 
either  in  politics  or  in  literature.  But  in  1833  ne 
wrote  from  Haverhill  to  Mrs.  Sigourney  in  Hart 
ford,  "  I  have  found  that  my  political  reputation  is 
more  influential  than  my  poetical ;  so  I  try  to 
make  myself  a  man  of  the  world  —  and  the  public 
are  deceived,  but  /  am  not."  So  slender  a  store 
of  health  had  the  "  toughening  process  "  of  Whit- 
tier's  youth  left  for  his  manhood,  that  it  could  not 
have  seemed  possible  for  him  at  that  time  to  attain 
distinction  in  both  directions.  The  mere  fact,  how 
ever,  that  at  the  age  of  thirty  he  went  to  Philadel 
phia,  where  he  remained  till  1840,  as  the  editor  of 
the  Freeman,  indicates  the  regard  in  which  he  was 
held  by  his  fellows  in  the  agitation  against  slavery. 
Quaker  that  he  was,  he  could  never  advocate  war, 
yet  with  his  own  weapons  he  fought  ferociously. 
To  the  zeal  with  which  he  plied  one  weapon,  the 
great  body  of  Anti-Slavery  Poems  in  his  collected 


WHITTIER  AND    LOWELL        249 

works  bears  witness.  The  weapon  of  shrewd,  high- 
minded  politics  was  no  less  effective  in  his  hands. 
So  pre-eminently  do  we  regard  him  now  as  the 
poet  that  it  is  difficult  to  realise  how  telling  were 
his  labours,  not  only  as  a  member  of  the  Massachu 
setts  General  Court  in  1835  an<^  l$36>  but  as  a 
quiet  power,  through  a  long  succeeding  period,  in 
the  political  counsels  of  the  parties  in  which  he 
believed  successively  as  competent  to  advance  the 
interests  to  which  his  life  was  devoted.  In  the  full 
record  of  his  life,  by  Mr.  S.  T.  Pickard,  it  is  pecu 
liarly  interesting  to  learn  how  intimately  the  politi 
cal  fortunes  of  men  so  prominent  as  Caleb  Cushing, 
Sumner,  Fremont,  and  indirectly  Lincoln,  were 
affected  by  the  opinions  and  actions  of  Whittier. 
As  the  disguised  Quaker,  accomplishing  his  own 
ends  undetected  of  the  angry  crowd,  Whittier  pre 
sented  in  one  evening  a  type  of  his  life  through 
many  years.  The  phase  of  it  thus  recalled  is  not 
that  which  is  best  remembered,  but  to  forget  it  is  to 
forget  a  vital  element  of  his  completeness. 

When  Whittier  gave  up  the  editorship  of  the 
Pennsylvania  Freeman,  in  1840,  he  fell  into  the 
mode  of  life  which  remained  practically  unchanged 
for  more  than  fifty  years.  In  1836  he  had  sold  the 
Haverhill  farm,  and  established  himself  with  his 
mother  and  sister  in  the  village  of  Amesbury. 
Hither  he  retired  from  Philadelphia  in  a  broken 
condition  of  health,  which  rendered  the  remainder 


250  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

of  his  life  uniformly  quiet.  There  were  frequent 
periods  in  which  he  could  not  read  or  write  for  more 
than  half  an  hour  at  a  time.  "  I  dread  to  touch  a 
pen,"  he  once  wrote  to  a  friend.  "  Whenever  I  do 
it  increases  the  dull,  wearing  pain  in  my  head, 
which  I  am  scarcely  ever  free  from."  When  he  was 
but  forty  he  could  truly  say,  "  I  have  already  lived  a 
long  life,  if  thought  and  action  constitute  it.  I  have 
crowded  into  a  few  years  what  should  have  been 
given  to  many."  It  was  not,  however,  for  him  "  to 
rust  unburnish'd,"  for  the  very  circumstances  which 
put  an  end  to  some  of  his  activities  quickened 
others.  Indeed,  the  poet  as  now  we  know  him 
best  could  hardly  have  been  developed  through  a 
continuance  of  his  early  labours. 

In  the  long  life  still  to  be  lived  there  was  no 
dearth  of  stimulus  to  the  meditative,  spiritual  ele 
ments  of  his  nature,  and  to  the  expression  of  all 
the  gentler,  intimate  spirit  of  New  England,  of 
which  his  poems  are  peculiarly  the  voice.  His 
domestic  life  was  marked  by  singular  simplicity  and 
affection.  The  death  of  his  mother,  at  the  end  of 
1857,  left  him  for  nearly  seven  years  in  a  devoted 
relationship  with  his  sister  Elizabeth,  like  himself 
unmarried,  and  not  unlike  the  sisters  of  Lamb  and 
Renan  in  the  place  she  held  in  her  brother's  heart. 
When  she  died,  in  1864,  Whittier  wrote,  "The 
great  motive  of  life  seems  lost ; "  but  friends  and 
kindred  did  not  suffer  him  to  want  for  affection  and 


I 


From  an  etching  of  a  photograph  taken  about  1880. 


OF  THB 

UNIVERSITY 


WHITTIER   AND    LOWELL        251 

care.  Of  his  capability  for  friendships  with  men  his 
Personal  Poems  speak  with  clearness,  and  many  a 
one  might  have  written  as  Bayard  Taylor  wrote  to 
Fields  when  "  The  Tent  on  the  Beach  "  appeared  : 
"  How  pleasantly  you  and  I  will  float  down  to  pos 
terity,  each  holding  on  to  the  strong  swimmer, 
J.  G.  W. ! "  There  are  abundant  memorials  also 
of  his  friendships  with  women,  especially  Mrs. 
Child,  Mrs.  Fields,  Lucy  Larcom,  Celia  Thaxter, 
and  Gail  Hamilton,  who  cleverly  wrought  him  in 
the  war-time  a  pair  of  slippers  typical  of  his  bearing 
toward  the  conflict.  The  bellicose  American  eagle 
which  adorned  each  foot  held  in  its  talons  a  cluster 
of  thunderbolts,  but  the  colour  of  his  plumage  was 
a  Quaker  drab.  A  joke  was  not  easily  lost  on 
Whittier,  for  a  Yankee  gift  and  sense  of  humour 
came  to  him  as  directly  as  his  other  inheritances. 
The  marks  of  appreciation  and  honour  flowing 
from  widely  various  sources  in  his  later  years  more 
than  offset  the  indignities  to  which  the  young 
antislavery  agitator  was  subjected.  He  died  on 
September  yth,  1892,  at  the  house  of  a  friend  at 
Hampton  Falls,  New  Hampshire,  leaving  Dr. 
Holmes  as  the  sole  survivor  of  the  group  of  New 
Englanders  who  had  done  more  than  any  other 
body  of  men  for  American  letters.  In  the  death  of 
Whittier,  a  voice,  clear  to  the  last,  truly  and  broadly 
representative  both  of  his  region  and  of  his  coun 
try,  was  hushed. 


252  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

Even  to  suggest  in  a  brief  space  all  the  achieve 
ments  of  a  life  of  eighty-five  industrious  years  is 
next  to  impossible.  Still  more  foolhardy  were  the 
attempt  to  point  out  all  the  qualities  of  the  work 
which  remains  as  its  monument.  The  best  of  it  is 
too  familiar  to  require  comment.  One  could  almost 
wish  "  Barbara  Frietchie  "  and  "  Maud  Muller  "  — 
like  tunes  that  lose  their  charm  from  too  much  repe 
tition  —  less  familiar.  But  "  Snowbound,"  —  which 
many  agree  upon  as  Whittier's  masterpiece,  —  "  In 
School  Days,"  "  Ichabod,"  "  My  Psalm,"  and  the 
dozen  or  dozens  of  other  poems  which  other  tastes 
will  elect,  could  ill  be  spared  from  the  pages  of  our 
literature ;  nay,  the  best  of  them  could  not  be 
spared  at  all.  When  Whittier  fails  of  his  best,  his 
artistic  faults  are  not  far  to  seek.  Still  farther  from 
the  beaten  ways  of  books,  however,  are  his  sweet 
ness  and  purity  of  spiritual  sense,  his  faithfulness  to 
simple  and  true  standards  of  living,  and  his  hatred 
of  wrong,  however  strongly  entrenched.  In  such 
qualities  as  these  he  and  his  work  make  their  quiet 
claim  to  abiding  remembrance.  v 

James  Russell  Lowell  indicated  clearly  the  differ 
ence  between  himself  and  the  class  of  men  known 
primarily  as  reformers  when  he  wrote  to  a  friend : 
"  Reform  cannot  take  up  the  whole  of  me,  and  I 
am  quite  sure  that  eyes  were  given  us  to  look  about 
us  with  sometimes,  and  not  always  to  be  looking 
forward."  Your  complete  reformer  is  generally  a 


WHITTIER  AT  78. 
From  an  engraving  by  J.  A.  J.  Wilcox. 


or  THB 

XWJVERSITT 


WHITTIER   AND    LOWELL        253 

man  of  one  idea.  Whittier  was  by  no  means  alto 
gether  such  an  one,  and  if  Lowell  had  even  more  of 
the  mellowness  which  belongs  to  the  fruit  of  richer 
soils,  the  difference  between  the  men  is  sufficiently 
explained  by  the  circumstances  of  their  ancestry  and 
training.  Lowell's  inheritances  from  many  genera 
tions,  were  of  the  best  that  New  England  could  give 
to  its  children.  His  father,  the  Rev.  Charles  Low 
ell,  lovingly  described  by  Lowell  as  "  Dr.  Primrose 
in  the  comparative  degree,"  was  for  more  than  fifty 
years  minister  of  the  West  Church,  occupying  the 
building  now  used  as  the  West  End  Branch  of  the 
Public  Library,  in  Boston.  He  lived  at  Elmwood, 
in  Cambridge,  four  miles  away  from  his  church,  and 
here  his  more  famous  son,  the  youngest  of  five  chil 
dren,  was  born  on  February  22nd,  1819.  It  is  easy  to 
fill  in  the  background  of  the  boy's  life  in  a  scholarly 
family  of  high  standing  in  the  college  town.  When 
the  time  for  him  to  graduate  from  Harvard  drew 
near,  his  course  of  reading  everything  except  the 
books  prescribed  by  the  faculty  brought  about  his 
rustication  at  Concord  until  Commencement  Day, 
and  the  Class  Poem  of  1838  was  not  read  by  its 
author.  When  he  was  a  professor  himself  he 
asked  one  of  his  class  in  Dante,  who  was  anxious 
to  know  his  marks,  what  he  thought  he  really  de 
served,  and  when  the  youth  named  a  figure  which 
would  pass  him  in  his  examination,  Lowell  answered, 
"  You  may  take  it,  and  I  shan't  have  the  bother  of 


254  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

reading  your  book."  Under  such  treatment  he 
would  doubtless  have  been  with  his  fellows  on  Class 
Day.  Both  the  earlier  and  the  later  incident  point 
to  the  fact  that  Lowell's  nature  had  a  place  for  other 
qualities  than  the  strenuousness  of  the  mere  re 
former.  So  various,  indeed,  were  his  endowments 
that  at  different  stages  of  his  career  he  was  to  be 
seen  in  widely  different  lights. 

In  1848,  ten  years  after  graduating  from  college, 
he  published  three  pieces  of  writing  which  spoke  for 
three  distinct  elements  in  the  man  as  he  already  was, 
and  foreshadowed  what  he  was  still  more  conspicu 
ously  to  become.  It  was  a  broadly  diversified  expres 
sion  of  a  single  nature  to  bring  forth  in  one  year  The 
Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,  The  Fable  for  Critics,  and  the 
first  series  of  The  Eiglow  Papers,  which  had  been 
appearing  for  about  two  years  in  periodicals.  In 
the  first  of  these  three  productions  a  poet  spoke,  in 
the  second  a  wit  who  was  also  a  penetrating  critic 
of  literature,  in  the  third  a  wit,  too,  but  at  the  same 
time  a  patriot,  a  scholar  overflowing  with  recondite 
lore,  and  a  shrewd  interpreter  of  New  England 
character.  The  ten  years  which  had  passed  since 
Lowell's  graduation  had  contributed  to  his  develop 
ment  in  all  these  directions.  First  of  all,  after  he 
had  tried  manfully  to  devote  himself  to  the  law,  it 
became  clear  to  him  and  his  friends  that  literature 
must  be  the  vital  concern  of  his  life.  In  1840  he 
had  become  engaged  to  Miss  Maria  White,  who 


LOWELL  AT   24. 
From  an  engraving  of  the  portrait  by  W.  Page. 


or  THB 
UNIVERSITY 


WHITTIER   AND    LOWELL        255 

was  gifted  not  only  with  poetic  talents,  but  with  a 
nature  of  sensitive  response  to  the  spirit  of  reform 
that  had  begun  to  fill  the  air.  The  effect  of  this 
nature  upon  Lowell's  was  to  quicken  both  the  poet 
and  the  citizen  in  him.  His  first  volume  of  poems 
appeared  soon  after  his  engagement,  and  his  second 
before  his  marriage  in  1844.  In  the  intervening 
period  the  Abolitionists,  of  whom  at  nineteen  he 
wrote  that  they  "  are  the  only  ones  with  whom  I 
sympathise  of  the  present  extant  parties,"  had 
learned  to  recognise  the  value  of  his  services  as  a 
writer,  and  the  first  winter  of  his  married  life  was 
passed  in  Philadelphia,  in  an  editorial  connection 
with  the  Pennsylvania  Freeman,  which  had  drawn 
Whittier  also  from  New  England.  In  Cambridge 
again,  Lowell  began  in  1846  a  four  years*  service  as 
a  regular  contributor  to  the  Anti-Slavery  Standard  of 
New  York,  in  which  some  of  the  first  Eiglow  Papers 
originally  appeared.  Meanwhile,  in  his  private 
capacity  he  was  leading  the  life  which  permitted 
him  to  speak  of  himself  in  later  years  as  "  one  of 
the  last  of  the  great  readers,"  and  a  volume  of  Con 
versations  on  Some  of  the  Old  Poets,  published  in 
1845,  was  the  fruit  of  it.  In  addition  to  all  this, 
the  ripening  experiences  of  personal  joy  and  sorrow, 
and  the  feeling  toward  friends  which  always  made 
him  care  more  that  they  should  esteem  him  highly 
than  think  well  of  what  he  wrote,  had  helped  to  form 
the  writer  of  the  three  remarkable  books  of  1848. 


256  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

It  is  little  strange  that  such  a  man,  not  yet  thirty 
years  old,  should  feel  within  himself  a  sure,  though 
unaggressive,  confidence  of  achieving  still  greater 
things. 

The  Lowell  at  whom  we  look  in  1858  goes  by 
the  dignified  titles  of  Professor  in  Harvard  College 
and  Editor  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  then  completing 
its  first  year  of  existence.  A  letter  written  by  Long 
fellow,  in  1855,  says  that  Lowell  "astonished  the 
town  last  winter  with  a  course  of  lectures  on  Poetry. 
Whereupon  the  college  immediately  laid  hold  of 
him  and  made  him  my  successor."  Lowell  felt 
himself  to  be  "  not  the  stuff  that  professors  are 
made  of,"  believed  that  he  would  have  been  "  a 
more  poetical  poet "  if  he  had  never  become  a  pro 
fessor,  and  called  his  college  work  "  my  annual  dis 
satisfaction  of  lecturing."  But  it  was  an  annual 
delight  to  the  undergraduates,  whose  relations  with 
him  were  frequently  as  human  as  they  were  aca 
demic.  The  outer  world  also  owed  much  to  the 
professorship,  for  it  led  him  more  than  ever  to  the 
pursuit  of  congenial  studies  with  a  view  to  sharing 
with  others  his  pleasure  in  them.  It  is  doubtful, 
however,  whether  all  the  essays,  which  stand  alike 
for  his  scholarship  and  his  mastery  of  English  style, 
would  have  come  into  being  if  he  had  not  been  also 
an  editor,  first  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly ',  and  then,  with 
Mr.  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  of  the  North  American 
Review.  In  the  pages  of  these  periodicals  many  of 


a 
o 


a 

o 

ffi 


WHITTIER   AND    LOWELL        257 

Lowell's  prose  writings  first  appeared,  for  those  were 
days  in  which  the  editor  of  a  magazine  was  expected 
to  be  one  of  its  chief  contributors.  When  the  Atlan 
tic  was  begun,  who  but  Lowell  could  be  its  editor  ? 
The  time  was  ripe  for  banding  together  the  writers 
of  New  England  in  an  enterprise  which  should  not 
be  merely  "  literary,"  but  should  bring  the  strongest 
literary  forces  of  the  country  to  bear  upon  the 
problem  which  had  to  be  solved  in  the  end  by  war. 
Lowell  was  eminently  of  the  craft  of  writers,  emi 
nently  a  skilful  judge  of  the  writings  of  others,  and 
eminently  competent  to  use  his  own  pen  in  the 
interest  of  Northern  sentiments.  With  such  a 
company  of  contributors  as  he  had  at  his  elbow,  it 
was  not  difficult  for  the  right  man  to  giv.e  the  mag 
azine  the  place  it  took  at  once,  but  the  contributors 
were  hardly  more  essential  to  this  than  the  right 
man,  and  that  man  was  Lowell. 

The  decade  between  1848  and  1858  wrought  its 
greatest  changes  in  Lowell's  domestic  surroundings, 
—  changes  which  he  was  not  unwilling  to  record  in 
such  verses  as  "After  the  Burial,"  written  in  1850 
upon  the  death  of  a  daughter.  In  1847  n^s  ^rst 
child  had  died,  and  in  1852,  while  he  was  travelling 
in  Europe,  partly  in  hope  that  Mrs.  Lowell's  broken 
strength  and  spirit  might  be  restored,  the  loss  of 
their  only  son  befell  them  at  Rome.  From  this 
grief  Mrs.  Lowell  never  recovered,  and  before  the 
end  of  1853,  about  a  year  after  their  return,  she 


258  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

died  at  Elmwood.  When  Lowell  was  appointed  to 
the  Harvard  professorship,  he  made  a  second  visit 
of  a  year  to  Europe,  for  the  purpose  of  study.  A 
year  after  his  return  in  1856,  his  second  marriage  — 
to  Miss  Frances  Dunlap,  who  had  been  entrusted 
with  the  education  of  his  one  surviving  daughter  — 
took  place,  and  the  relationship  which  lasted  through 
nearly  thirty  years  of  his  life  was  begun.  Dates 
and  figures  give  but  a  bloodless  record  of  affections 
so  strong  as  Lowell's.  Because  they  were  also  most 
tender,  one  does  not  wish  to  say  more  about  them. 

To  know  of  Lowell  in  the  war-time,  it  is  needless 
to  look  beyond  his  poems.  In  "The  Washers  of 
the  Shroud  "  he  is  seen  at  the  beginning  of  the  con 
flict,  looking  forward.  The  second  series  of  the 
Biglow  Papers,  which  he  himself  thought  better  than 
the  first,  carries  us  through  its  course,  and  into  the 
troublous  period  that  followed.  The  noble  "  Com 
memoration  Ode "  marks  the  ending  of  the  war 
itself.  Lowell  could  not  bring  himself  to  begin  the 
ode  until  two  days  before  it  was  to  be  read,  when 
"  something,"  as  he  said,  "gave  me  a  jog,  and  the 
whole  thing  came  out  of  me  with  a  rush."  The 
memory  of  his  nephews  who  had  been  killed,  "  three 
likely  lads  ez  wal  could  be,"  burned  within  him, 
and  the  truth  of  Mr.  Henry  James's  remark,  that 
"  the  man  and  the  author  in  him  were  singularly 
convertible,"  has  no  firmer  support  than  in  this  in 
stance  of  his  attaining  almost  his  highest  poetical 


LOWELL  AT   3  I . 
From  an  engraving  by  J.  A.  J.  Wilcox. 


OF  TH* 

UNIVERSITY 


WHITTIER   AND    LOWELL        259 

expression    when    stirred    in    his    deepest   personal 
feelings. 

It  remains  to  look  at  Lowell  in  still  another  im 
portant  aspect,  that  of  Minister  of  the  United  States, 
under  the  administration  of  President  Hayes,  at  the 
Court  of  St.  James.  Even  regarding  the  shorter 
time  of  service  at  Madrid  in  the  same  capacity  as  a 
step  of  transition,  the  change  from  Cambridge  to 
London  was  abrupt.  But  Lowell,  through  actual 
sojournings  abroad  almost  as  much  as  in  his  "fire 
side  travels,"  had  long  been  a  citizen  of  the  world, 
and  it  was  no  surprise  to  those  who  knew  him  that 
the  less  cloistral  life  of  London  seemed  hardly  more 
foreign  to  him  than  Elmwood.  "  The  true  reward 
of  an  English  style,"  Mr.  James  has  characteristi 
cally  said,  "was  to  be  sent  to  England."  A  young 
English  poet,  writing  in  prose  not  long  ago,  con 
trasted  Emerson's  philosophical  mission,  Haw 
thorne's  mission  of  silence,  and  Dr.  Holmes's 
mission  of  dining  with  Lowell's  coming  pre-emi 
nently  as  "  his  Excellency  the  Ambassador  of 
American  Literature  to  the  Court  of  Shakespeare." 
It  is  not  impossible  that  Mr.  Watson  was  uncon 
sciously  recalling  and  expanding  the  title  which 
Thackeray  gave  to  Washington  Irving.  Be  that 
as  it  may,  the  fitness  of  Lowell  for  his  post  was  in 
stantly  recognised  in  England,  and  his  personal 
popularity  won  even  the  tribute  of  distrust  from  the 
loudest  disciples  of  "  Americanism  "  at  home.  How 


260  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

sure  he  must  have  been  that  his  English  friends, 
who   never  could  have  enough  of  his  after-dinner 
and  "  occasional "   speaking,  would  not  misunder 
stand  him,  may  be  inferred  from  his  saying  to  the 
Master  and  Fellows  of  Emmanuel  College,  Cam 
bridge,     John    Harvard's    alma    mater:     "I     must 
allow    that,   considering    how    long  we    have   been 
divided  from  you,   you  speak   English  remarkably 
well."     So  far  was  Lowell  from  ceasing  to  be  even 
aggressively  an  American,  that  Mr.  G.  W.  Smalley, 
who  reports  this  last  remark,  quotes  the  words  of 
an  English  lady  who  said :  "  Hawthorne  insulted 
us  all   by  saying  all  English  women  are  fat,  but  I 
dare   not    say   in    Mr.   Lowell's    presence    that    an 
American    woman    is    thin."      The    truth    is    that 
Lowell  constantly  expressed  his  nationality  in  Eng 
land  as  clearly  as  he  had  expressed  it  at  home  in 
such  lines   as  "Jonathan   to   John,"  but  with  the 
difference    which    the    different    circumstances    de 
manded.     Dr.  Holmes  had  written  to  him  in  1876 
to  thank  him  not  only  for  a  volume  of  his  essays, 
but  also  for  showing  "  our  young  American  schol 
ars  that  they  need  not  be   provincial  in  their  way 
of  thought  or  scholarship  because  they  happen  to 
be  born  or  bred  in  an  outlying  district  of  the  great 
world  of  letters."      It  was  but  another  evidence  of 
the  convertibility  of  man  and  author  in  Lowell  that 
his    public    life    set    forth    conspicuously  a  similar 
absence  of  all  provincialism  in  the  best  product  of 


WHITTIER   AND    LOWELL        261 

our  civilisation.  When  any  representative  of  a 
government  brings  both  his  own  and  a  foreign 
people  to  a  better  understanding  of  their  relations 
to  each  other,  he  does  his  country  the  service  of 
a  patriot.  To  this  work,  Lowell  gave  his  riper 
powers,  as  he  had  given  his  younger  zeal  to  the 
cause  in  which  he  thought  he  could  best  serve  his 
native  land. 

When  President  Cleveland  came  into  power,  in 
1885,  it  was  inevitable  that  Lowell's  place  in  Lon 
don  should  be  taken  by  another.  He  returned 
to  America  full  of  honours,  but  could  not  yet  re 
turn  to  Elmwood,  for  his  wife  had  died  in  London, 
and  the  old  house,  he  thought,  would  be  "  full  of 
ghosts."  His  winters,  therefore,  were  divided  be 
tween  Boston  and  the  "  Deerfoot  Farm "  of  his 
son-in-law  at  Southborough,  Massachusetts,  and 
the  early  and  late  summers  between  London  and 
Whitby,  on  the  Yorkshire  coast.  When  his 
grandsons  were  to  enter  Harvard  his  daughter's 
family  came  to  Elmwood  to  live,  and  Lowell 
came  with  them.  There  he  died  on  August  i2th, 
1891. 

The  quality  in  Lowell  which  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen 
has  defined  as  "  his  ineradicable  boyishness  "  kept 
him  at  heart  very  much  the  same  person  from  the 
beginning  to  the  end  of  his  life  of  seventy-two  years. 
It  helped  him  always  to  make  light  of  unessential 
troubles.  Soon  after  he  was  first  married,  Mrs. 


262  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

Lowell  wrote  to  Mrs.  Hawthorne,  "  I  begin  to 
fear  we  shall  not  have  the  satisfaction  of  being  so 
very  poor,  after  all."  At  times  her  fears  were  not 
realised,  but  they  were  the  times  when  Lowell,  in 
letters  to  his  friends,  could  give  the  most  amusing 
accounts  of  his  condition.  Once  when  he  was  in 
Europe  he  told  his  bankers  to  let  him  know  when 
his  money  was  spent,  for  then  he  meant  to  go 
home.  He  had  no  accounts  of  his  own  to  tell 
him,  and  an  error  in  the  banker's  accounts  brought 
his  visit  prematurely  to  an  end.  But  in  later  years 
the  bankers  made  good  his  disappointment  by  a 
profitable  investment  of  the  sum  which  really  had 
remained  to  his  credit,  and  Lowell  made  the  inci 
dent  a  text  for  a  humourous  denunciation  of  all 
accounts  and  figures.  Humourous  and  enthusiastic, 
companionable  and  sympathetic,  he  was  the  best  of 
friends,  and  the  life  of  congenial  assemblies.  From 
London  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Norton,  "  I  have  never 
seen  society,  on  the  whole,  so  good  as  I  used  to 
meet  at  our  Saturday  Club."  What  wit  and  spirit 
he  brought  to  its  meetings  the  testimony  of  others 
informs  us.  What  memories  he  was  capable  of 
carrying  away  with  him,  one  may  find  recorded  in 
his  Elegy  on  Agassiz,  in  which  it  is  as  easy  to 
find  the  lines  relating  to  Emerson,  Hawthorne  and 
others  as  if  their  names  were  given.  Here,  indeed, 
as  everywhere  in  his  writings,  Lowell  himself  stands 
revealed.  His  authoritative  Life  remains  to  be 


From  an  engraving  by  J.  A.  J.  Wilcox. 


WHITTIER   AND    LOWELL        263 

written,  but  when  it  is  done  it  will  be  almost  —  as 
so  brief  a  paper  as  this  must  be  altogether  —  a 
superfluous  piece  of  reading  for  one  who  has  made 
the  direct  acquaintance  of  Lowell  through  his 
poems,  his  essays,  and  his  letters. 

The  contrast  between  the  lives  of  Whittier  and 
Lowell  prepares  one  for  precisely  the  contrasts  that 
may  be  drawn  between  the  work  of  the  one  and  the 
other,  both  in  quality  and  in  scope.  The  differ 
ences  are  obvious,  but  beneath  them  all,  like  the 
family  likeness  of  brothers  whose  features  are  widely 
unlike,  the  resemblance  they  bear  to  each  other  is 
that  of  true  sons  of  older  New  England,  and  they 
show  themselves  at  times  to  be  close,  of  kin.  Their 
most  striking  outward  resemblance  lay  in  their  atti 
tude  in  early  life  toward  the  cause  of  antislavery. 
To  see  two  men  for  whom  the  later  years  held  such 
different  things  in  store  joined  at  any  time  in  a 
common  warfare  helps  us  truly  to  realise  the  vitality 
of  the  uniting  cause.  The  change  in  the  attitude 
of  a  whole  nation  towards  a  cause  which  has  ceased 
to  exist,  except  as  history,  may  not  unfitly  be 
likened  to  the  change  that  sometimes  comes  to  a 
fleet  of  boats  lying  quietly  at  sundown  in  a  crowded 
harbour,  and  heading  all  in  one  direction.  In  the 
night  a  sharp  wind  comes  out  of  a  new  quarter,  and 
there  is  a  great  confusion  of  swinging  vessels  ;  but 
in  the  morning  the  fleet  is  seen  pointing  as  peace 
fully  in  a  new  direction  as  if  nothing  had  happened. 


264  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

The  difference  in  the  change  of  a  national  attitude 
is  that  the  lives  and  the  writings  of  such  men  as 
Lowell  and  Whittier  help  us  to  recall  the  turmoil 
of  the  night  as  something  more  than  a  sleepy  re 
membrance. 


LONGFELLOW   AND    HOLMES 

FEW  of  us  know  at  first  hand  the  music  of 
shepherds,  sailors,  and  gipsies ;  yet  certain 
strains  and  cadences  unfailingly  bring  the  images 
of  these  persons  before  the  mind,  even  without  the 
visual  aid  which  opera  provides.  The  notes  by 
which  we  recognise  them  have  become  a  part  of 
musical  tradition.  So  have  the  personalities  of 
Longfellow  and  Holmes,  to  say  nothing  of  the  notes 
of  their  music,  become  virtually  traditional.  Their 
habits  of  thought  and  expression  entered  long  ago 
into  the  common  stock  of  accepted  knowledge.  It 
has  been  said  by  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  of  Longfellow, 
and  the  words  may  be  applied  with  hardly  less  of 
accuracy  to  Dr.  Holmes,  that  his  "  qualities  are  so 
mixed  with  what  the  reader  brings,  with  so  many 
kindliest  associations  of  memory,  that  one  cannot 
easily  criticise  him  in  cold  blood."  If  such  a  pro 
ceeding  is  difficult,  there  is  the  double  difficulty,  in 
dealing  with  the  personal  records  of  the  two  writers, 
that  their  lives  are  at  once  singularly  well  known 
and  singularly  uneventful,  It  is  almost  like  reciting 


266  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

certain  of  their  own  most  familiar  lines  to  relate 
anew  the  incidents  of  their  careers.  The  knowledge 
of  them  must  be  well-nigh  universal,  so  that  the 
narrator  can  do  little  more  than  to  refrain,  if  possi 
ble,  from  such  traditional  phrases  as  "  the  genial 
autocrat"  and  "the  beloved  poet  of  Cambridge,'* 
and  content  himself  with  saying  again  what  many 
of  his  readers  must  know  already. 

The  contrast  between  the  volumes  containing  the 
complete  works  of  Longfellow  and  of  Holmes  is 
strong  enough  to  speak  for  the  contrast  between 
their  native  endowments.  Indeed,  there  would  be 
scanty  reason  for  placing  their  names  side  by  side 
were  it  not  that  the  backgrounds  of  their  lives  pre 
sent  resemblances  many  and  marked.  In  modern 
American  life  there  can  hardly  be  a  social  unit 
so  definite  and  distinct  as  that  which  stood  for 
"  society  "  in  Boston  in  the  days  when  Longfellow 
and  Holmes  were  in  their  long-continued  prime. 
Their  background,  to  a  striking  degree,  was  the 
background  of  this  social  unit,  their  Boston,  of 
course,  being  that  which  stretches  toward  Cambridge 
and  Harvard  College,  rather  than  toward  State 
Street  and  the  wharves.  If  for  stricter  accuracy  it 
must  be  said  that  for  Longfellow  it  was  Cambridge, 
on  the  contrary,  that  stretched  itself  toward  Boston, 
it  is  necessary  only  to  remember  that  the  best  intel 
lectual  and  social  interests  of  the  two  places  were 
one.  It  was  not  for  the  persons  identified  most 


LONGFELLOW  AS  A   YOUNG   MAN. 


LONGFELLOW   AND    HOLMES     267 

strongly  with  these  conservative  interests  to  be  seen 
in  the  front  ranks  of  such  Cf  movements  "  as  Aboli 
tion  and  Transcendentalism.  Emerson  and  Lowell 
took  greater  liberties  in  being  laws  unto  themselves. 
Lowell  could  undoubtedly  see  the  truth  and  humour 
of  his  wife's  remark  about  Abolitionists  :  "  They  do 
not  modulate  their  words  and  voices.  They  are 
like  people  who  live  with  the  deaf,  or  near  water 
falls,  and  whose  voices  become  high  and  harsh." 
At  the  same  time  Lowell  could  become  early  and 
heartily  an  Abolitionist,  Longfellow  less  promptly 
and  completely,  and  Holmes  not  at  all.  Perhaps 
this  is  but  an  evidence  of  the  fact  that  Holmes  and 
Longfellow  stood  supreme  amongst  their  brother 
hood  of  writers  in  their  identification  with  the  social 
world  in  which  they  found  themselves.  It  was  a 
world  which  cared  not  a  whit  whether  Bohemia  was 
bounded  by  the  sea  or  by  mountains,  which  was 
sufficient  unto  itself,  which  restricted  its  travels  to 
foreign  lands  —  unless  now  and  then  a  lecturing 
tour  had  to  be  made  in  America  —  and  withal  it 
was  a  world  from  which  sordidness  and  low  ideals 
were  excluded  with  rare  success.  It  is  no  more  dif 
ficult  to  discover  its  limitations  in  certain  directions 
than  it  is  to  find  entertainment  in  the  unfailing  ap 
pearance  of  one  member  of  its  group  of  writers  with 
a  copy  of  verses  when  another  member  was  about 
to  sail  for  Europe ;  yet  this  larger  world  of  "  soci 
ety  "  and  its  smaller  imperium  in  imperio  of  letters, 


268  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

were  fruits  of  American  life  which  one  would  be 
only  too  glad  to  see  still  ripening  in  any  quarter  of 
the  land.  That  this  fruitage  should  take  two  such 
different  forms  as  those  presented  by  the  work  of 
Longfellow  and  of  Holmes  is  not  the  least  signifi 
cant  point  in  placing  them  together  against  their 
common  background. 

It  was  not  until  the  year  1836,  when  Longfellow 
was  but  little  short  of  thirty  years  old,  that  he  found 
himself  before  this  background.  He  had  ancestral 
rights  to  being  there.  His  father  and  great-grand 
father  were  graduates  of  Harvard  College,  and 
through  his  mother's  family  his  descent  from  John 
Alden  and  Priscilla  Mullins  was  as  direct  as  Bryant's. 
But  the  Boston  and  Cambridge  surroundings  were 
not  those  of  his  earlier  years.  He  was  born  on 
February  27,  1807,  in  Portland,  Maine,  where  his 
father  was  a  distinguished  lawyer,  and  in  1825,  with 
Hawthorne  for  a  classmate,  he  was  graduated  from 
Bowdoin  College.  During  his  college  years  the 
tendency  toward  books  and  verse-making,  which  had 
begun  early  in  his  well-conditioned  boyhood,  was 
clearly  enough  marked  to  reveal  unmistakable  signs 
of  his  future  both  to  himself  and  to  his  elders. 
"  The  fact  is,"  he  wrote  to  his  father  before  his 
graduation,  "  I  most  eagerly  aspire  after  future  emin 
ence  in  literature;  my  whole  soul  burns  most 
ardently  for  it,  and  every  earthly  thought  centres  in 
it."  That  his  elders  were  not  without  hopes  of  this 


LONGFELLOW  AT  47. 
From  an  engraving  of  a  crayon  portrait  by  Lawrence. 


OF  THB 

UNIVERSITY 


LONGFELLOW   AND    HOLMES     269 

future  may  be  inferred  from  the  encouragement 
given  him  by  the  editors  of  the  day  to  send  them 
his  productions  in  prose  and  verse.  Still  more 
encouraging  to  him  must  have  been  the  proffer, 
immediately  upon  his  graduation,  of  the  newly  estab 
lished  Professorship  of  Modern  Languages  at  Bow- 
doin  College,  with  the  opportunity  of  studying  in 
Europe  before  his  duties  should  begin. 

In  yet  another  of  his  college  letters  to  his  father 
Longfellow  declared :  "  I  have  resolutely  deter 
mined  to  enjoy  myself  heartily  wherever  I  am.  I 
find  it  most  profitable  to  form  such  plans  as  are 
least  liable  to  failure."  These  statements  might 
almost  be  taken  from  a  credo  of  optimism.  They 
were  the  words  of  a  boy,  but  of  the  very  boy  who 
became  the  Longfellow  of  later  years.  In  the  letters 
which  he  wrote  from  Europe,  between  the  ages  of 
nineteen  and  twenty-two,  the  connecting  links  be 
tween  the  boy  and  the  man  are  clearly  apparent.  A 
shrewdness  of  observation,  a  kindliness  of  humour 
hardly  consistent  with  its  utmost  keenness,  and  a 
thorough  good  feeling  for  those  about  him  and  at 
home  are  constantly  manifested.  What  strikes  one, 
perhaps  even  more  forcibly,  is  the  fact  that  this  boy 
from  a  quiet  New  England  town  and  college  was  so 
excellently  well  qualified  to  travel.  His  mind  was 
already  well  enough  trained  to  tell  his  eye  what  it 
needed  most  to  see,  and  his  serious  study  of  the  lit 
eratures  of  France,  Spain,  Italy  and  Germany,  car- 


270  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

ried  on  for  three  years  in  their  own  countries,  ren 
dered  this  mind  indeed  a  well-tempered  instrument 
for  the  work  it  had  to  do  when  he  returned  to  Bow- 
doin  College  in  1829. 

Early  in  1829  he  had  written  from  Gottingen  to 
one  of  his  sisters,  "  My  poetic  career  is  finished," 
and  for  some  years  nobody  would  have  questioned 
the  truth  of  the  statement.  Except  for  the  poetical 
translation  of  Cop/as  de  Mdnrique,  the  writings  of 
the  five  years  of  his  Bowdoin  professorship  were  in 
prose  —  magazine  articles,  text-books  of  French, 
Spanish,  and  Italian,  and  the  sketches  of  travel 
brought  together  in  1835  m  tne  two  volumes  of 
Outre-Mer.  The  kinship  of  this  first  original  pro 
duction  of  his  with  Irving's  Sketch-Book  is  almost 
invariably  pointed  out ;  and  when  this  is  done,  it  is 
worth  while  to  remind  one's  self  that  Longfellow,  in 
his  later  years,  is  reported  to  have  spoken  of  the 
Sketch-Book  as  the  first  book  that  fascinated  his  boy 
ish  imagination.  It  was  less  as  a  poet,  then,  than  as 
a  scholar  and  a  writer  of  good  prose  that  he  was 
asked  in  1834,  to  undertake  the  Professorship  of 
Modern  Languages  at  Harvard,  in  which  his  pre 
decessor  was  George  Ticknor,  and  his  successor 
Lowell.  There  was  again  an  opportunity  to  go 
abroad  for  further  study,  and  he  eagerly  accepted  it. 
With  him  went  his  wife  (Mary  Storer  Potter),  whom 
he  had  married  in  Portland  in  1831.  In  Sweden 
and  Denmark  and  Germany  he  applied  himself  to 


LONGFELLOW  AND    HOLMES     271 

study  as  in  his  earlier  days.  Before  the  end  of  1835 
the  first  great  sorrow  of  his  life  came  to  him  in  the 
death  of  his  wife  at  Rotterdam.  In  the  Paul  Flem- 
ming  of  Hyperion,  published  four  years  later,  the 
Longfellow  of  this  heavy-hearted  time  revealed  him 
self  with  tolerable  clearness.  We  need  but  com 
pare  the  book  with  his  journal  and  letters  to  see 
how  much  of  real  life  was  reproduced  in  the  form  of 
fiction.  Even  at  the  time  it  must  have  been  a  palp 
ably  open  secret  that  the  heroine  of  the  story  was 
the  heroine  of  the  real  and  longer  romance  of  Long 
fellow's  second  marriage.  It  was  not  only  through 
study,  therefore,  but  also  through  vital  experience 
that  Longfellow's  second  sojourn  abroad  had  its 
telling  effect  upon  him,  both  as  a  professor  and  as  a 
poet.  At  the  end  of  1836  he  established  himself  in 
Cambridge.  "  This  was  no  broken-winded  minis 
ter,"  as  Dr.  Hale  has  said,  "who  had  been  made 
professor ;  "  and  Longfellow  and  the  place  in  which 
he  found  himself  seemed  from  that  time  forth 
inalienably  fitted  to  each  other. 

This  very  year  of  1836  was  marked  by  the  ap 
pearance  of  Dr.  Holmes's  first  volume  of  Poems ; 
but  to  the  surroundings  into  which  Longfellow  was 
just  coming,  Dr.  Holmes,  like  another  St.  Paul, 
was  born  free.  It  gave  him  evident  pleasure  to  re 
late  how  his  entry  into  the  world  at  Cambridge, 
Massachusetts,  was  marked  by  the  simple  record  in 
his  father's  almanac  of  son  b.  against  the  date  August 


272  AMERICAN   BOOKMEN 

29th,  1809.  As  one  who  declared  his  preference 
politically  for  equality,  but  socially  for  the  quality, 
it  must  have  given  him  constant  satisfaction  to  re 
flect  upon  his  ancestry,  for  it  was  about  as  good  as 
any  which  New  England  could  afford,  and  gave 
him  an  unquestioned  place  in  the  caste  well 
named  by  himself,  Brahmin.  His  early  training  at 
home,  at  Andover,  and  at  Harvard  College,  where 
he  was  graduated  in  the  year  which  his  verses  for 
the  "  Class  of  '29  "  rendered  famous,  differed  from 
that  of  his  contemporaries  born  to  circumstances 
like  his  own,  mainly  in  its  larger  infusion  of  Calvin 
ism.  He  began  early  to  rebel  against  the  doctrines 
which  his  orthodox  father,  the  Rev.  Abiel  Holmes, 
would  have  had  him  accept,  and  never  quite  ceased 
to  resent  the  attempt  to  force  them  upon  him.  Evi 
dently  he  was  not  to  follow  in  his  father's  profes 
sional  footsteps.  For  a  year  he  attempted  the  study 
of  the  law,  as  Lowell  did  later  ;  but  the  best  thing 
he  achieved  during  that  time  was  the  impetuous 
writing  of  "  Old  Ironsides,"  which  carried  his  name 
up  and  down  through  the  country.  A  college 
periodical,  as  he  said  half  a  century  later,  also 
tempted  him  into  print,  and  infected  him  with  that 
pervasive  form  of  lead-poisoning  "which  reaches 
the  young  author  through  mental  contact  with  type- 
metal."  Of  his  two  mistresses,  the  muse  and  medi 
cal  science,  it  was  thus  the  muse  to  whom  he  gave 
his  first  allegiance.  But  medicine  was  soon  to  be- 


OLIVER  WENDELL   HOLMES  AT  41 
After  a  Daguerreotype. 


\i  •»  •  •  -^  ff  y 

"     OF  TH* 

UNIVERSITY 


LONGFELLOW   AND    HOLMES     273 

come  his  serious  occupation,  and  for  three  years  — 
one  at  home  and  two  in  Paris  —  he  applied  himself 
diligently  to  professional  study.  At  the  beginning 
of  1836  he  was  ready  to  hang  out  his  sign  in  Bos 
ton,  but  his  medical  success  was  to  lie  in  the  work 
of  a  writer  and  lecturer  rather  than  of  a  practitioner. 
As  his  biographer,  Mr.  John  T.  Morse,  Jr.,  has 
admirably  put  it :  "  When  he  said  that  the  smallest 
fevers  were  thankfully  received,  the  people  who  had 
no  fevers  laughed,  but  the  people  who  had  them  / 
preferred  some  one  who  would  take  the  matter  more 
seriously  than  they  thought  this  lively  young  joker 
was  likely  to  do."  Mr.  Morse  has  also  pointed 
out  the  fact  that  his  publishing  a  volume  of  poems 
in  the  very  year  of  his  beginning  to  practise  was, 
professionally,  reckless.  If  the  book,  however,  had 
contained  nothing  worth  reading  except  "  The  Last 
Leaf"  and  "  Old  Ironsides,"  it  would  have  marked 
the  arrival  of  a  new  and  distinct  figure  in  American 
letters. 

Here,  then,  were  Longfellow  and  Holmes,  in  the 
year  1836  beginning  their  respective  careers  as  a 
Harvard  professor  and  as  a  Boston  physician  and 
writer  of  verses.  Each  was  to  become  much  more 
in  the  years  that  followed,  but  for  Holmes  there  was 
to  be  a  long  period  of  comparatively  limited  fame. 
Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  has  said  of  him,  "  Few  popular 
authors  have  had  a  narrower  escape  from  obscurity," 
and  the  remark  is  full  of  truth.  It  surely  might  be 

18 


274  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

held  as  one  of  the  genuine  Ifs  of  literary  history 
that  if  the  Atlantic  Monthly  had  not  come  into  being 
in  1857,  with  Lowell  as  its  chief  editor,  insisting  as 


ts   s& 

tfrvt?  iffStZr  a^t,<z 


^^€^^-^7^ 

AUTOGRAPH  LINES  FROM  DR.  HOLMES'S  POEM  "THE  LAST  LEAF." 

"  a  condition  precedent "  that  Dr.  Holmes  should 
be  his  foremost  contributor,  the  "  Breakfast-Table  " 
series  of  books,  and  Dr.  Holmes^  novels,  which 
also  first  saw  the  light  in  the  Atlantic,  would  have 


LONGFELLOW  AT   55. 
From  an  engraving  of  a  portrait  by  G.  P.  A.  Healy. 


LONGFELLOW   AND    HOLMES     275 

stood  an  excellent  chance  of  remaining  unwritten. 
To  see  the  possible  author  of  these  books  in  the 
Holmes  of  the  twenty-one  years  between  1836  and 
1857  required  a  shrewd  vision.  Many  admirable 
realities  were  visible  to  eyes  less  keen  than  Lowell's. 
Not  only  as  a  writer  of  medical  essays,  but  still 
more  as  a  professor  of  anatomy,  first  for  two  years 
at  Dartmouth  College,  and  then  for  the  better  part 
of  a  lifetime  in  the  Medical  School  of  Harvard  Uni 
versity,  where  he  said  he  occupied  not  a  chair,  but 
a  whole  settee,  he  did  the  things  necessary  to  attain 
a  good  name  as  a  scientist.  His  lectures  on  the 
English  poets,  and  other  literary  themes,  in  Boston 
and  the  New  England  towns  where  the  lyceum 
system  flourished  added  something  to  the  reputa 
tion  as  a  man  of  letters  which  he  was  making  for 
himself  by  the  publication  of  successive  volumes  of 
verse.  But  through  all  this  time  it  was  within  his 
own  circle  that  his  gifts  were  most  fully  appreciated. 
His  marriage,  in  1840,  to  Miss  Amelia  Lee  Jack 
son  had  made  this  native  circle  doubly  his  own.  If 
it  was  provincial,  none  realised  the  fact  better  than 
he.  "  We  all  carry  the  Common  in  our  heads  as 
the  unit  of  space/'  he  once  wrote  to  Motley,  "  the 
State  House  as  the  standard  of  architecture,  and 
measure  off  men  in  Edward  Everetts  as  with  a  yard 
stick  ; "  and  less  consciously  he  bears  witness  to  his 
nativity  by  writing  of  his  health,  "  I  am  nicely." 
But  he  was  intensely  proud  of  his  Boston,  and  was 


276  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

yet  to  show  by  the  literary  uses  to  which  he  put  it 
how  the  local  might  be  extended  into  the  universal. 
For  himself,  he  declared  in  later  life  that  he  would 
rest  upon  having  said,  "  Boston  is  the  hub  of  the 
universe."  And  this  Boston  which  he  knew  came 
to  know  him  well  as  a  delightful  wit  and  talker,  a 
curious  student  of  himself  —  so  frank  that  he  could 
write,  "  I  have  always  considered  my  face  a  conven 
ience  rather  than  an  ornament "  —  a  shrewd  observer 
of  men,  and  the  local  laureate  of  civic,  social,  and 
academic  "  occasions."  Nothing  that  he  has  left 
shows  more  clearly  than  the  "  Poems  of  the  Class 
of  '29  "  the  strength  of  his  social  instinct  and  the 
nature  of  his  social  gift.  Add  to  the  printed  lines 
the  knowledge  that  he  frequently  sang  instead  of 
reading  these  verses  at  the  class  meetings,  to  which 
he  brought  them  without  a  break  for  thirty-eight 
years,  and  the  man  and  the  lyric  tendency  of  his 
muse  both  stand  forth  with  a  certain  clearness.  It 
is  equally  easy  to  see,  however,  that  if  the  light  in 
Dr.  Holmes's  hand  had  continued  to  show  itself 
exclusively  to  those  who  for  a  long  time  were  its 
only  witnesses,  his  escape  from  obscurity  would  not 
have  been  narrow,  but  impossible. 

When  1857  came  to  Longfellow,  it  found  his 
fame  far  beyond  the  need  of  such  help  as  might 
come  to  it  through  the  medium  of  a  new  magazine. 
From  1839,  wnen  Hyperion  and  his  first  volume  of 
poems,  Voices  of  the  Night ,  appeared,  he  had  gone 


(Ar  ^ 

% )  n  QA/Y/\_A_  i      1   i  . 

\ 


From  a  photograph  taken  m  Portland,  Maine. 


OF  TH« 

XTNIVERSITY 


LONGFELLOW   AND    HOLMES     277 

on  year  by  year  bringing  out  the  poems,  short  and 
long,  that  carried  his  name  and  the  love  for  the 
books  which  bore  it  through  most  of  the  world.  It 
is  needless  to  recite  the  list  of  these  works,  for  they 
are  still  household  words.  As  early  as  1847  came 
Evangcline,  raising  among  the  critics  the  intermi 
nable  question  of  the  possibility  of  English  hexa 
meters,  a  question  which  the  unnumbered  thousands 
did  not  take  time  to  answer,  except  by  buying  the 
book  and  reading  it  with  delight.  Hawthorne  had 
provided  him  with  the  story,  and  when  the  book 
won  its  immediate  recognition,  Longfellow  modestly 
wrote  to  him :  cc  This  success  I  owe  entirely  to  you, 
for  being  willing  to  forego  the  pleasure  of  writing  a 
prose  tale  which  many  people  would  have  taken  for 
poetry,  that  I  might  write  a  poem  which  many 
people  take  for  prose."  In  1855  Hiawatha,  which 
may  not  unfairly  be  considered  as  Longfellow's  most 
individual  production,  took  its  separate  place  in 
American  literature.  From  time  to  time,  through 
out  the  entire  period  ending  with  1857,  a  great 
number  of  the  shorter  poems  by  which  Longfellow 
is  best  known  made  their  appearance.  For  him  the 
chief  effect  of  the  establishment  of  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  was  external,  in  that  it  provided,  virtually 
at  his  door,  a  medium  for  almost  anything  he  might 
write. 

It  has  become  a  truism  to  say  that  the  serenity 
of  Longfellow's  poetry  was  merely  a  reflection  from 


il 

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i 

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LONGFELLOW   AND    HOLMES     279 

his  own  life.  It  is  no  less  a  threadbare  story  to  tell 
of  the  young  professor's  applying  to  Madam  Craigie 
for  rooms  in  the  house  which  had  been  Washing 
ton's  headquarters  at  Cambridge,  and  of  her  inform 
ing  him  that  she  could  take  no  more  students  as 
lodgers.  But  her  lodger  he  became,  and  in  1843, 
when  he  married  Miss  Frances  E.  Appleton,  of 
Boston,  her  father  bought  the  Craigie  house  and 
gave  it  to  the  young  professor  and  his  wife.  The 
daily  life  encompassed  by  its  walls  is  set  forth  with 
sufficient  detail  in  Longfellow's  published  journals. 
It  was  a  scholarly,  placid  life,  filled  with  domestic 
content,  varied  within  its  own  limits  by  constant, 
gracious  hospitality  and  by  journeyings  in  the  sum 
mer,  for  many  years  no  farther  than  to  Nahant. 
There  were  few  occasions  for  rebelling  against  cir 
cumstances  in  such  a  life  as  Longfellow's,  and  the 
notes  of  complaint  in  the  journals  are  rare.  Ill 
ness,  troublesome  eyesight,  the  inroads  of  imper 
tinent  admirers  and  seekers  after  autographs  and 
advice,  whom  he  treated  with  patient,  tender  consid 
eration  —  these  sometimes  gave  him  fair  occasion 
for  protest.  But  most  of  all  were  his  college  duties 
irksome  — "  the  working  in  the  crypts  of  life,  the 
underground  labour,"  as  he  defined  his  teaching. 
The  longing  for  greater  freedom  for  literary  produc 
tion  was  gratified  in  1855,  when  he  gave  up  his  pro 
fessorship.'  Through  all  the  ensuing  period,  in 
which  Dr.  Holmes  began  to  win  his  universal  fame, 


280  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

Longfellow,  already  a  firmly  established  "  figure," 
was  merely  fixing  more  securely  the  fame  he  had 
won.  "  I  do  not  see  why  a  successful  book  "  says 
one  of  the  characters  in  Hyperion,  "  is  not  as  great 
an  event  as  a  successful  campaign."  For  the  re 
mainder  of  Longfellow's  life  the  events  were  gener 
ally  of  this  character. 

The  tragic  exception  from  the  smoothness  of 
these  years  was  the  death  of  Mrs.  Longfellow  in  the 
summer  of  1861.  Her  dress  took  fire  from  a  match 
on  the  floor,  and  the  next  day  she  died  from  the 
shock  of  the  burning.  Longfellow,  some  weeks 
later,  defined  himself  as  "  outwardly  calm,  but  in 
wardly  bleeding  to  death."  What  the  loss  of  his 
wife  was  to  him  we  know  best  from  the  fact  that  the 
only  reference  to  it  in  his  writings  is  found  in  the 
sonnet,  "The  Cross  of  Snow,"  written  eighteen 
years  after  her  death,  and  kept  from  the  world  until 
after  his  own.  As  Bryant  undertook  the  translation 
of  Homer,  so  Longfellow  in  his  sorrow  turned  to 
Dante.  The  evenings  devoted  to  the  criticism  of 
this  work  by  Lowell,  Mr.  Norton,  and  other  friends 
whose  opinion  was  worth  getting,  showed  Long 
fellow  at  his  best,  in  the  midst  of  friends.  His 
letters,  throughout  his  life,  tell  us  how  much  his 
friendships  were  to  him,  even  from  the  almost 
boyish  days,  when  Charles  Sumner,  George  W. 
Greene,  and  Samuel  Ward  first  took  their  important 
places  in  his  life.  It  is  not  without  a  certain  signifi- 


I 


•'THE  AUTOCRAT  OF  THE  BREAKFAST  TABLE/" 
From  Vanity  Fair  (London),  June  19,  1886. 


of  nit 

TJNIVERSl'IrT 


LONGFELLOW   AND    HOLMES     281 

cance  to  find  Mr.  Howells  saying  that  "  he  was 
Longfellow  to  friends  who  were  James  and  Charles 
and  Wendell  to  one  another."  For  somewhat  the 
same  reason,  perhaps,  it  is  easier  for  everybody  to 
speak  of  him  merely  as  "  Longfellow,"  than  it  is  to 
drop  the  "  Dr."  from  before  the  name  of  Holmes. 
The  contrast  between  the  men  in  the  relations  of 
friendship  is  brought  clearly  to  mind  by  comparing 
the  quality  and  frequency  of  Dr.  Holmes's  class 
poems  with  Longfellow's  single  production  of  the 
kind,  his  "  Morituri  Salutamus,"  written  fifty  years 
after  graduation.  "  Just  before  leaving  for  our  re 
spective  homes,"  writes  one  of  those  who  heard  him 
read  it,  "  we  gathered  in  a  retired  college-room  for 
the  last  time,  talked  together  a  half  hour  as  of  old, 
agreed  to  exchange  photographs,  and  prayed  to 
gether."  The  seriousness  of  this  picture  undoubt 
edly  had  its  counterpart  in  some  of  the  later  meetings 
of  Dr.  Holmes's  class ;  but  it  would  be  impossible 
to  imagine  Longfellow  as  the  singer  of  the  earlier 
rollicking  verses  of  Holmes.  What  the  one  said 
of  the  other  is  this :  "  I  find  Longfellow  peculiarly 
sweet  in  disposition,  gentle,  soothing  to  be  with,  not 
commonly  brilliant  in  conversation,  but  at  times 
very  agreeable,  and  saying  excellent  things  with  a 
singular  modesty."  In  another  place  he  is  described 
by  the  same  hand  as  "  luminous  with  gentle  graces 
as  always."  Such  expressions  as  these  help  one  to 
understand  why  the  word  "  benignant "  has  so  often 


282  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

been  applied  to  him.  In  the  personal  quality  of  the 
man  there  must  have  been  much  of  the  temper  which 
prompted  him  to  write  of  Poe :  "  The  harshness  of 
his  criticisms  I  have  never  attributed  to  anything 
but  the  irritation  of  a  sensitive  nature  chafed  by  some 
indefinite  sense  of  wrong."  And  many  years  later 
he  wrote  in  his  journal,  as  if  in  gentle  protest : 
"  Poets  who  cannot  write  long  poems  think  that 
no  long  poems  should  be  written."  In  Poe's  pas 
sionate  charge  of  plagiarism  there  undoubtedly  was 
as  much  truth  as  Mr.  Stedman  expresses  in  calling 
Longfellow  "  a  good  borrower/'  and  as  any  one 
may  see  by  looking  at  the  obvious  connection  be 
tween  what  Longfellow  read  and  what  he  wrote. 
But  there  was  never  any  attempt  to  conceal  this  ob 
viousness,  any  more  than  there  was  to  refrain  from 
entering  in  his  journal  from  year  to  year  the  same 
reflection  prompted  by  the  date  of  October  ist. 
The  obviousness  of  another  sort  which  characterises 
much  of  his  work  may  well  be  mentioned  in  the 
same  breath  with  Mr.  Stedman's  just  remark  about 
the  fashion  of  slighting  him  "  for  the  very  qualities 
which  had  made  him  beloved  and  famous,"  and  with 
his  own  saying  that  authors,  of  all  men,  must  come 
at  the  right  time.  Longfellow  surely  did  this,  and 
if  later  singers  are  not  permitted  to  deal  so  freely  in 
the  obvious,  may  it  not  be  in  part  because  his  unerr 
ing  craftsmanship  has  imposed  upon  them  the  need 
of  doing  simple  things  extremely  well  if  they  are  to 


LONGFELLOW   AND    HOLMES     283 

be  done  at  all  ?  So  many  gifts,  not  of  craftsmanship 
only,  were  his,  and  such  was  the  spell  of  his  personal 
presence,  that  Mr.  Howells  could  truly  write  of  a 
chance  meeting  with  him  in  a  Cambridge  street, 
"  You  felt  that  the  encounter  made  you  a  part  of 
literary  history."  This  feeling  rendered  it  impos 
sible  for  his  contemporaries  and  their  immediate 
successors  to  give  him  his  true  place.  Whether  he 
is  held  above  it  to-day,  or  has  sunk  below  it,  can 
hardly  be  told  with  complete  certainty,  for  the 
Longfellow  tradition  is  still  potent  to  attract  some 
minds  and  to  repel  others.  At  the  time  of  his  death, 
on  March  24th,  1882,  there  were  few  voices  of  dis 
sent  from  the  opinion  that  the  clearest  and  best- 
beloved  light  of  American  letters  was  extinguished. 
"  Let  'em  put  in  all  their  ifs  and  buts"  wrote  Lowell 
once ;  "  I  don't  wonder  the  public  are  hungrier  and 
thirstier  for  his  verse  than  for  that  of  all  the  rest  of 
us  put  together." 

The  year  of  Longfellow's  death  was  the  very  year 
in  which  Dr.  Holmes  gave  up  his  medical  professor 
ship,  and  became  more  than  ever  such  a  "  figure  " 
as  Longfellow  had  been.  Fame  had  come  to  him 
with  extraordinary  swiftness  as  soon  as  the  "  Auto 
crat"  papers,  begun  in  the  first  number  of  the 
Atlantic  Monthly,  November,  1857,  were  known  to 
be  his.  It  would  be  so  strange  at  this  day  to  think 
of  ascribing  their  manner  and  method  to  anybody 
else,  that  one  is  amused  to  find  in  the  December, 


284  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

1857,  number  of  the  Knickerbocker  Magazine  the 
statement :  "  If  John  Sanderson,  author  of  c  The 
American  in  Paris/  were  alive,  we  should  unhesi 
tatingly  attribute  c  The  Autocrat  at  the  Breakfast 
Table '  to  his  facile  pen."  The  open  secret  in 
Boston  that  Dr.  Holmes  was  its  author  soon  be 
came  open  everywhere ;  and  particularly  when  the 
second  series,  "  The  Professor  at  the  Breakfast 
Table/'  dealing  somewhat  more  freely  with  religious 
beliefs,  began  to  appear,  the  name  of  Holmes  asso 
ciated  itself  in  many  minds  with  everything  that 
was  dangerous  and  iconoclastic.  The  mildness  to 
modern  ears  of  many  of  the  passages  that  seemed 
most  shocking  forty  years  ago  is  more  eloquent 
than  any  words  could  be  about  that  general  temper 
ing  of  rigorous  beliefs  in  which  Dr.  Holmes  was 
undoubtedly  one  of  the  strongest  influences.  As 
his  habit  of  mind  in  this  regard  extended  itself  to 
others,  so  did  his  more  personal  habits  of  thought 
and  phrase  —  shrewd,  whimsical,  and  kindly  —  be 
come  year  by  year  more  familiar.  In  verse,  in 
fiction,  not  wholly  clear  of  the  charge  of  being 
"  medicated,"  in  the  memoirs  of  his  friends,  Motley 
and  Emerson,  in  the  volume  written  to  acknowledge 
the  overpowering  attentions  that  filled  his  hundred 
days  of  1886  in  Europe,  and  in  later  returns  to 
what  Mr.  Howells  has  excellently  called  "  the  form 
of  dramatised  essay  which  he  invented  in  the  Auto 
crat  "  —  in  all  these  writings  the  personal  Dr. 


From  an  etching  by  S.  A.  Schoff,  1879. 


LONGFELLOW   AND    HOLMES     285 

Holmes  is  eminently  present,  "  a  Boswell  writing 
out  himself."  It  is  no  wonder  that  the  regard 
in  which  Lowell  and  his  own  circle  had  long  held 
him  in  Boston  spread,  almost  without  modification, 
to  an  entire  world  of  readers. 

Dr.  Holmes  died  on  October  yth,  1894.  Of  all 
the  company  of  men  who  laid  the  scene  of  so  much 
of  our  literary  history  within  and  near  Boston,  it 
was  for  him  to  walk  farthest  with  the  new  genera 
tion.  But  with  his  death  a  period  which  had  virtu 
ally  ended  some  years  before  was  brought  to  an 
outward  close.  The  work  of  what  came  as  nearly 
as  anything  we  have  had  to  being  a  "  school "  of 
writers  was  definitely  completed.  What  variety 
within  its  general  uniformity  was  possible,  the  two 
names  of  Longfellow  and  Holmes  abundantly 
suggest.  Yet  diverse  as  they  were,  it  is  well  worth 
while  to  think  of  them  together  as  representatives 
in  literature  of  all  the  good  things  that  come  of  the 
best  birth  and  breeding,  and  of  the  scholarly  high- 
mindedness  which  should  be  implied  by  those  terms. 
"  There  is  a  little  plant  called  Reverence  in  the 
corner  of  my  Soul's  garden,  which  I  love  to  have 
watered  about  once  a  week  ;  "  so  Dr.  Holmes  once 
said  of  his  church-going  habits.  Not  only  would 
Longfellow  have  spoken  a  hearty  Amen  to  these 
words,  but  their  meaning  for  both  might  be  so 
extended  as  to  include  the  general  attitude  of  men 
who  are  conservatives  at  heart.  Such  they  both 


286  AMERICAN    BOOKMEN 

were  in  spite  of  occasional  demonstrations  to  the 
contrary.  To  aid  in  the  foundation  of  a  national 
literature  which  should  stand  entirely  apart  from  our 
inheritance  of  letters  was  obviously  not  the  work 
for  which  such  men  were  made.  What  they  re 
ceived  from  their  past  and  reflected  from  their  pre 
sent  may  not  have  been  largely  typical  of  the  thing 
we  call  "  Americanism,"  but  they  both  transmitted 
faithfully  what  came  to  them,  and  apart  from  all  the 
delight  they  communicated  to  others  by  this  process, 
the  background  they  cannot  help  revealing  is  one 
which  the  best  Americans  will  do  well  to  remember 
and  revere. 


Ind 


ex 


ABSALOM,"  103. 
"  Ad  Spent,"  134. 

Advertiser,  Daily,  New  York,  158. 
"  After  the  Burial,"  257. 
Agassiz,  Alexander,  262. 
"  Ages,  The,"  29,  63. 
Alcott,  Amos   Bronson,  177,  178, 

186,  191,  193,  214. 
Alden,  John,  52,  268. 
Alhambra,  The,  18. 
Allan,  John,  78,  79,  82. 
Allan,  Mrs.  John,  78,  80. 
"Allen's  Wife,  Josiah,"  155. 
Alniuick  Castle,  with  Other  Poems, 

119. 
"American  Flag,  The,"  114,  116, 

118. 

"  American  in  Paris,  The,"  284. 
American  Magazine  of  Knowledge, 

208. 
"  American  Men  of  Letters  Series," 

76. 

American  Monthly,  The,  102,  105. 
"  American  Scholar,  The,"  186. 
American  Whig  Review,  90. 
Andrew,  Gov.  J.  A.,  218. 
Annapolis  Academy,  33,  127. 
Anti-Slavery  Poems,  248. 
Anti-Slavery  Standard,  156,  255. 
Appleton,  Miss  Frances  E.,  279. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  197. 
Ascham,  Roger,  137. 
Astor,  John  Jacob,  120. 
Astor,  William  B.,  123. 


Atlantic  Monthly,  194, 195,  218,  256, 

257,  274,  277,  283. 
Autocrat   at  the  Breakfast    Table, 

The,  283,  284. 

BABES  in  the   Wood,   The," 
167. 
Backward    Glance    O'er     TraveVd 

Roads,  A,  241. 
Balzac,  Honore  de,  49. 
Bancroft,    George,     125,    126-128, 

130,  142,  208. 
"  Barbara  Frietchie,"  252. 
Barham,  Richard  H.,  173. 
Barnaby  Rudge,  88. 
"Bedott,  Widow,"  155. 
Beers,  Prof.  Henry  A.,  107,  no. 
"  Bells,  The,"  93. 
Biddle,  Nicholas,  68. 
Bigelow,  Hon.  John,  71. 
Biglow  Papers,  The,  254,  255,  258. 
"Billings,   Josh"  (H.  W.  Shaw), 

173- 

Bismarck,  128. 
Blessington,  Lady,  108. 
Blithedale  Romance,  The,  209,  214. 
Bonner,  Robert,  120. 
Bowdoin   College,    159,   203,    268, 

269,  270. 

Bracebridge  Hall,  18. 
Bread  and  Cheese  Club,  The,  38, 

66. 

Bread  and  Milk  College,  The,  55. 
Breakfast  Table  series,  274  ;  Auto- 


288 


INDEX 


crat  at  the,   283,  284;   Professor 

at  the,  284. 

Brevoort,  Henry,  119. 
Bridge,  Horatio,  203 
"  Briefless  Barrister,  The,"  173. 
Briggs,  Charles  F.,  88. 
Bright,  John,  168. 
Broad-way  Journal,  New  York,  88, 

89. 

Brook  Farm,  190,  209,  210. 
Brown,  Charles  Brockden,  i. 
Browne,  Charles  Farrar  (Artemus 

Ward),  163-171. 
Browning,  R.  and  E.  B.,  72. 
Bryant,  Mrs.  Frances  Fairchild,  62, 

72,  73- 

Bryant,  Dr.  Peter,  52,  54,  58,  59. 
BRYANT,  WILLIAM  CULLEN,  29, 

34,  42,  47,  50,  52-75,  118,  119, 

280. 

Bucke,  Dr.  Richard  Maurice,  241. 
Bulkeley,  Rev.  Peter,  178. 
"  Burns,"  119. 
Burns,  Robert,  246. 
Burroughs,  John,  222,  241. 
Byron,  Lord,  80,  126. 

CABOT,  James  Elliot,  176,  197. 
Campbell,  Thomas,  19,  115. 
Carlyle,   Thomas,    137,    184,   187, 

189,  222,  231. 
Carpet  Bag,  The,  165. 
"Carroll,  Lewis,"  71. 
"  Cedarmere,"  71. 
Channing,  Edward  Tyrrel,  59. 
"  Chiefly  about  War  Matters,"  218. 
Child,  Mrs.  Lydia  Maria,  251. 
"  Children  of  Adam,"  233. 
Chronicle,  Morning,  New  York,  3. 
"  Class  of  '29,  Poems  of  the,"  276. 
Clemm,  Mrs.  Maria,  76,  83,  84,  91, 

92,  93'  95- 
Clemm,  Miss   Virginia,   83.     (See 

Poe.) 

Cleveland,  Pres.  Grover,  261. 
Cockloft  Hall,  6. 


Coleman,  William,  117,  118. 

"  Coliseum,  The,"  82. 

Columbia  College,  3,  38. 

"  Commemoration  Ode,"  258. 

Commercial  Advertiser,  New  York, 

46. 

CONCORD,  EMERSON  AND,  176-199. 
Conquest  of  Mexico,  The,  24,  129, 141. 
Conquest  of  Peru,  The,  141. 
Constable,  Archibald,  24. 
"  Conversations,"  193. 
Conversations  on  Some  of  the  Old 

Poets,  255. 
Cooper,  Anna,  32. 
Cooper,  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Fenimore, 

3°- 
COOPER,  JAMES  FENIMORE,  29-51, 

64,  65,  66,  68,  75,  112,  116,  216. 
Cooper,  Susan  Fenimore,  34. 
Cooper,  Judge  William,  30,  32,  33. 
Coplas  de  Afanrique,  270. 
Cotton,  John,  143. 
Courier,  Boston,  156. 
Courier,  Portland,  158,  159,  162. 
Craigie,  Madam,  279. 
"  Crayon,  Geoffrey,"  18. 
Crescent,  The,  New  Orleans,  227. 
"Croaker"  verses,  The,  117,  118. 
Cromwell,  184. 
"  Cross  of  Snow,  The,"  280. 
"Culprit  Fay,  The,"  114. 
Curtis,  George  Ticknor,  104. 
Curtis,  George  William,  10, 62, 155, 

191,  192. 
Gushing,  Caleb,  249. 

DANA,  Richard  Henry,  47,  59, 
63,  64,  66,  117,  119. 
Dartmouth  College,  275. 
Dashes  at  Life  with  a  Free  Pencil, 

"3- 
Davis,  Charles  Augustus,  158,  159, 

162. 

Dawes,  Rufus,  99. 
"Days,"  189. 
Decatur,  Stephen,  13. 


INDEX 


289 


"Deerfoot  Farm,"  261. 

Deerslayer,  The,  47. 

De  Lancey,  Miss  Susan  Augusta, 

34- 

Dial,  The,  191. 
Dickens,  Charles,  22,  23,  88. 
Dr.  Grims/iawe's  Secret,  219. 
Dolliver  Romance,  The,  219. 
"Downing,  Major  Jack,"  156-162, 

163- 
DRAKE,  WILLIS,  HALLECK,  AND, 

99-124. 
Drake,  Joseph  Rodman,  113-118, 

123. 

Du  Maurier,  George,  50. 
Dunlap,  Miss  Frances,  258. 

T?AGLE,  Brooklyn,  225. 

Eastern  Argus,  Portland,  159. 

Elliott,  Com.  Jesse,  46. 

Ellis,  Rev.  Dr.  George  E.,  144. 

"Elmwood,"  253,  259,  261. 

Embargo,  The,  54. 

Emerson,  Charles  Chauncy,  185. 

Emerson,  Edward  Bliss,  179,  185. 

Emerson,  Mrs.  Ellen  Louisa  Tuck 
er,  183. 

Emerson,  Mrs.  Lydia  Jackson,  184. 

Emerson,  Miss  Mary  Moody,  179, 
182. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  97,  129, 
176-199,  210,  211,  214,  225,  231, 
232,  233,  259,  262,  267,  284. 

Emerson,  Rev.  William,  178,  179. 

EMERSON  AND  CONCORD,  176-199. 

Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge, 
260. 

"  English  Traits,"  196. 

Eureka,  98. 

Evangeline,  277. 

Everett,  Alexander  H.,  137. 

Everett,  Edward,  275. 

TfABLE  for  Critics,  A,  27,  120, 
1       254. 
Fairchild,  Miss  Frances,  62. 


Fanny,  119. 

Fanshawe,  205. 

Fenimore,  Miss  Elizabeth,  30. 

Ferdinand  and  Isabella,   139,   140, 

141. 

"  Fern,  Fanny,"  no. 
Fields,  James  T.,  168, 195,  212,  218, 

251. 

Fields,  Mrs.  James  T.,  251. 
Fiske,  John,  142. 
"  Forest  Hymn,  The,"  65. 
Forrest,  Edwin,  no. 
France    and    England    in    North 

America,  149. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  i,  155. 
Eraser's  Magazine,  141. 
Frederick  the  Great,  184. 
Freeman,  The,  Brooklyn,  227. 
Freeman,  Pennsylvania,   247,   248, 

249,  255. 

Free  Press,  Newburyport,  245,  247. 
Fremont,  John  C.,  249. 
French,  Daniel  C.,  194. 
Fruitlands,  190. 

Fuller,  Miss  Margaret,  191,  210. 
"  Future  Life,  The,"  62. 

/^ARDINER,  Rev.  Dr.  John 

V_T     Sylvester  John,  132. 

Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  247. 

Gentleman 's  Magazine,  Burton's,  85. 

"  Glenmary,"  109. 

Godey's  Magazine,  89. 

Godwin,  Parke,  70. 

Goethe,  126,  240. 

"  Gold  Bug,  The,"  85. 

Goldsmith,  Oliver,  18. 

Good  Gray  Poet,  The,  238. 

Goodrich,  Samuel  Griswold,  102, 

207. 

Graham's  Magazine,  85,  243. 
Gratz,  Miss  Rebecca,  20. 
Greeley,  Horace,  44-46,  88,  191. 
Greene,  George  Washington,  140, 

280. 
Greenough,  Horatio,  44,  109. 


290 


INDEX 


Grinnell,  Miss  Cornelia,  109. 
Griswold,  Rev.  Rufus  Wilmot,  76, 
94,  162. 

HALE,    Rev.    Dr.   Edward  Ev 
erett,  271. 

Hale,  Robert  Beverly,  151. 
Haliburton,  Judge  Thomas  Chand 
ler,  157. 
HALLECK,  AND  DRAKE,  WILLIS, 

99-124. 
Halleck,  Fitz-Greene,  64,  113-124, 

159- 

Hallock,  Rev.  Moses,  55. 
Hamilton,  Alexander,  I. 
Hamilton,  Gail,  251. 
Hampshire   Gazette,  Northampton, 

54- 

Harte,  Bret,  155,  175. 

Harvard  College,  63,  104,  125,  126, 
128,  132,  137,  145,  179,  184,  253, 
256,  258,  261,  266,  268,  270,  272. 

Harvard  University,  144,  151,  187, 

275- 

Hathorne,  Capt.  Nathaniel,  202. 
Hathorne,  Mrs.  Nathaniel,  202,  206. 
Hawthorne,  Julian,  200,  201,  213, 

221. 

HAWTHORNE,  NATHANIEL,  72,  73, 

90,    177,    191,    200-221,    230,    259, 

260,  262,  268,  277. 
Hawthorne,  Mrs.  Sophia  Peabody, 

211,  212,  220,  262. 
Hawthorne,  Una,  211,  218. 
Hayes,  Pres.  Rutherford  B.,  259. 
Hiawatha,  277. 
Hickling,  Thomas,  135. 
Higginson,    Thomas    Wentworth, 

154,  170. 
HISTORIANS,    THE,     ESPECIALLY 

PRESCOTT  AND  PARKMAN,  125- 

152. 
History  of  the  Conspiracy  of  Pontiac, 

148. 
History  of  the  United  Netherlands, 

129. 


History  of  the  United  States,  127. 
Hoar,  Judge  E.  R.,  192. 
Hoar,  Miss  Elizabeth,  185. 
Hoffman,  Miss  Matilda,  10,  n,  20. 
Holmes,  Rev.  Abiel,  272. 
Holmes,  Mrs.  Amelia  Lee  Jackson, 

275- 
Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  20,  128, 

129,  144,  155,  159,  176,  179,  184, 

190,  196,  198,  251,  259,  260,  265- 

268,  271-276,  279,  281,  283-286. 
HOLMES,  LONGFELLOW  AND,  265- 

286. 

Home  as  Found,  42,  46. 
Home  Journal,  New  York,  93,  109, 

no. 

Homeward  Bound,  42. 
Hone,  Philip,  21,  23,68. 
Hood,  Thomas,  173. 
Houghton,  Lord   (R.  M.  Milnes), 

230. 

House  of  the  Seven  Gables,  The,  213. 
Howells,  William  Dean,  125,  167, 

221,  281,  283,  284. 
Hughes,  Thomas,  194. 
HUMOURISTS,  SOME,  153-175. 
Hurrygraphs,  113. 
"  Hymn  to  Death,"  62. 
Hyperion,  271,  276,  280. 

ICHABOD,"  252. 
"  Idlewild,"  1 10,  112. 
Iliad,  Bryant,  73. 
"  In  School  Days,"  252. 
Inklings  of  Adventure,  113. 
"  Inscription  upon  the  Entrance  to 

a  Wood,  An,"  58. 
Irving,  Ebenezer,  22. 
Irving,  Peter,  3,  5,  9,  13,  15. 
Irving,  Mrs.  Sarah,  2. 
IRVING,  WASHINGTON,   1-28,   29, 

33,  50,  64,  66,  68,  75,  119,   129, 

155,  159,  216,  259,  270. 
Irving,  William,  7. 
Italian  Note- Books,  217. 


INDEX 


291 


JACKSON,    Miss    Amelia   Lee, 
275- 

Jackson,  Pres.  Andrew,  160,  161. 
Jackson,  Miss  Lydia,  184. 
James,  Henry,  Jr.,  258,  259. 
James,  Henry,  Sr.,  215. 
Jefferson,  Joseph,  26. 
Jefferson,  Pres.  Thomas,  54,  55. 
Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  116. 
"  Jonathan  to  John,"  260. 
Journal,  Evening,  Albany,  174. 
"  June,"  75- 

T/ENNEDY,    John    Pendleton, 
J^    83. 

Kent,  Chancellor  James,  38. 

"Kerr,  Orpheus  C.,"  171. 

"  Kilkenny,  The  Lads  of,"  5. 

King,  Charles,  38. 

"  Knickerbocker  idea,  The,"  10,  26. 

Knickerbocker  Magazine,  148,   173, 

284. 
Knickerbocker's    History    of    New 

York,  Diedrich,  9,  56. 
"  Kubla  Khan,"  189. 


40. 


JADYofthe  Lake,  The,  60. 

•^     Lafayette,  Marquis  de,  4 

Lamb,  Charles,  250. 

Lang,  Andrew,  265. 

Larcom,  Lucy,  251. 

Last  Leaf,  The,  273. 

Last  of  the  Mohicans,  The,  37,  47. 

Leather  Stocking  Tales,  The,  47,  50. 

Leaves  of  Grass,  222,  223,  225,  227, 

228,  230,  231,  238,  240,  241. 
Ledger,  New  York,  120. 
Legendary,  The,  102. 
Leslie,  Charles  Robert,  19. 
"Letters  from  Idlewild,"  113. 
Letters  from   Under  a  Bridge,    99, 

109. 
Life  and  Death  of  John  of  Barne- 

veld,  The,  129. 
"  Life  that  is,  The,"  62. 
Lilium  Parkmanni,  151. 


Lincoln,  Pres.  Abraham,  235,  236, 
249. 

"Lines  on  Leaving  Europe,"  113. 

Linzee,  Capt.  John,  131. 

"  Literati  of  New  York,  The,"  89. 

Loiterings  of  Travel,  1 13. 

Long  Islander,  The,  225. 

Longfellow,  Mrs.  Frances  E.  Apple- 
ton,  279,  280. 

Longfellow,  Henry  Wadsworth,  20, 
25,  52,  88,  101,  105,  119,  140,  200, 
203,  207,  213,  217,  219,  243,  256, 
265-271,  273,  276-283,  285. 

Longfellow,  Mrs.  Mary  Storer 
Potter,  270. 

LONGFELLOW  AND  HOLMES,  265- 
286. 

Longworth,  David,  7.  ., 

Lounsbury,  Prof.  Thomas  R^/34- 

"Love  in  a  Cottage,"  113. 

Lowell,  Rev.  Charles,  253. 

Lowell,  Mrs.  Frances  Dunlap,  258. 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  66,  88,  112, 
120,  129,  153,  156,  163,  187,  194, 
195,  196,  242,  244,  252-264,  267, 
270,  272,  274,  275,  280,  283,  285. 

Lowell,  Mrs.  Maria  White,  257, 
262,  267. 

LOWELL,  WHITTIER  AND,  242- 
264. 

MANN,  Horace,  214. 
Manning,     Miss     Elizabeth 
Clarke,  202. 

"  Manuscript  Found  in  a  Bottle, 
The,"  82. 

Marble  Faun,  The,  217,  219. 

"Marco  Bozzaris,"  114,  119. 

Marryat,  Capt.  Frederick,  108. 

Martian,  The,  50. 

"Marvel,  Ik"  (Donald  G.  Mitch 
ell),  14. 

Massachusetts  Historical  Society, 
131,  144,  151. 

Massachusetts  Horticultural  So 
ciety,  151. 


292 


INDEX 


Mazzini  Statue,  Central  Park,  74. 

"  Maud  Muller,"  252. 

Middlebury  College,  173. 

Milnes,  Richard  Monckton  (Lord 
Houghton),  230. 

Mirror,  New  York,  88,  90, 105,  no. 

Mitchell,  Donald  G.  ("Ik  Mar 
vel"),  14,  155,  218. 

Monet,  Claude,  229. 

Moore,  Thomas,  19. 

"Morituri  Salutamus,"  281. 

Morris,  George  Pope,  106,  112. 

Morse,  John  T.,  Jr.,  273. 

Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse,  210. 

Motley,  John  Lothrop,  125,  126, 
128-130,  142,  159,  217,  275,  284. 

Mullins,  Priscilla,  52,  268. 

Murray,  John,  16. 

Murray,  Lindley,  137. 

"  My  Psalm,"  252. 

NASBY,  Petroleum  V.,"  171. 
"  Nature,"  185. 
Naval  History,  46. 
"New   Rape  of  the  Lock,  The," 

175- 

Newton,  Gilbert  Stuart,  19. 
North  American  Review,  58,  59,  60, 

61,  137,  207,  256. 
Norton,  Prof.  Charles   Eliot,  187, 

256,  262,  280. 
Note-Books,  201,  209,  216,  217. 

O'CONNOR,  William  Douglas, 
238. 

Odyssey,  Bryant,  73. 
"  Old  Ironsides,"  272,  273. 
"Old  Manse,  The,"  184,  210. 
"  Old  Oaken  Bucket,  The,"  105. 
"  Oldstyle,  Jonathan,"  3. 
Oregon  Trail,  The,  148. 
Otsego  Hall,  31,  32,  41,  49. 
Our  Old  Home,  219. 
Outre-Mer,  270. 


pARKER,  Miss  Hannah,  100. 
A     PARKMAN,  THE  HISTORIANS, 

ESPECIALLY       PRESCOTT       AND, 
125-152. 

Parkman,   Francis,   125,  126,   130, 

142-152. 

Parkman,  Rev.  Francis,  143. 
Parkman,  Samuel,  143. 
"  Parley,  Peter,"  102. 
Parr,  Rev.  Dr.  Samuel,  132. 
"Partington,  Mrs."  (B.  P.  Shilla- 

ber),  165,  171. 
Parton,  James,  107. 
Passionist  Fathers,  146. 
Pathfinder,  The,  47. 
Paulding,  James  Kirke,  7. 
Peabody,  Miss  Sophia  Amelia,  208. 
Pencil  lings  by  the   Way,   106,   108, 

IJ3- 

Pennsylvania   Freeman,    247,    248, 

249>  255- 

"  Pennsylvania  Hall,"  247. 
Perry,  Edgar  A.,  80. 
Perry,  Com.  Oliver  Hazard,  46. 
Personal  Poem  s,  251. 
Peter  Parley's   Universal  History, 

208. 

"  Peter  Piper,"  etc.,  7. 
Pfaffs,  167. 
Phi  Beta  Kappa,  Harvard,  63,  186, 

187. 

Philip  the  Second,  142. 
Phillips,  Willard,  58,  59. 
"Phoenix,  John,"  171. 
Pickard,  Samuel  T.,  249. 
Pierce,   Pres.    Franklin,  204,    215, 

216,  217,  219,  220. 
Pilot,  The,  37,  116. 
Pioneers,  The,  37,  44. 
Pioneers  of  France   in    the    New 

World,    The,   149. 
Plaindealer,  Cleveland,  165. 
Poe,  David,  77. 
POE,    EDGAR    ALLAN,  76-98,  99, 

113,  162,  282. 
Poe,  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Arnold,  77. 


INDEX 


293 


Poe,  Mrs.  Virginia  Clemm,  83,  91, 

92>  93»  94- 

Poems  (Holmes,  1836),  271. 
"  Poems  of  the  Class  of  '29,"  276. 
Poems  on  Slavery,  243. 
Polk,  Pres.  James  K.,  212. 
Post,  Evening,  New  York,  9,  66, 

68,  117. 

Potter,  Miss  Mary  Storer,  270. 
Powhatan:    A    Metrical  Historical 

Romance,  162. 
Prairie,  The,  40. 
Precaution,  36,  1 1 6. 
Prescott,  John,  131. 
Prescott,  Col.  William,  131. 
Prescott,  Judge  William,  132. 
Prescott,  William  Hickling,  24, 125, 

126,  129,  130,  131-143*  J44,  J48, 

149,  152. 
PRESCOTT   AND   PARKMAN,   THE 

HISTORIANS,  ESPECIALLY,  125- 

152. 
Professor  at  the  Breakfast    Table, 

The,  284. 

"  Proud  Miss  MacBride,  The,"  175. 
Punch,  London,  170. 
Putnam,  George  P.,  n. 

QUAR  TERL  Y     Review,      1 08, 
&      139. 

!DASSELAS,ii6. 
•**     "  Raven,  The,"  90. 
Raven  and  Other  Poems,  The,  90. 
Recorder,  Boston,  100. 
Red  Rover,  The,  40. 
Renan,  Ernest,  250. 
Rip  Van  Winkle,  26. 
Ripley,  Rev.  Dr.  Ezra,  184. 
Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,    The, 

129. 

Rogers,  Samuel,  19. 
Romance  of  Monte- Bent,  217. 
Round  Hill  School,  127,  128. 
Royster,  Miss  Sarah  Elmira,  95. 
Ruth  Hall,  1 10. 


ST.  BOTOLPH  Club  (Boston), 
IS- 

Salmagundi,  6,  7,  13. 

Sanderson,  John,  284. 

Sands,  Robert  C.,  65. 

Saturday  Club,  129,  194,  262. 

Saturday  Visiter,  Baltimore,  82. 

Saxe,  John  Godfrey,  165,  173-175. 

Scarlet  Letter,  The,  201,  212,  213. 

Schoolcraft,  Henry  Rowe,  146. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  15,  19,  20,  21, 
40,  60,  143. 

Scott,  Gen.  Winfield,  38. 

"  Seashore,"  189. 

Sedgwick,  Miss  Catherine  Maria, 
64. 

Sedgwick,  Henry,  64. 

Septimius  Felton,  219. 

Seven  Tales  of  My  Native  Land, 
205. 

Shaw,  Henry  W.  ("Josh  Bill 
ings"  ),  173. 

Shaw,  Quincy  A.,  146. 

Shelton,  Mrs.  Sarah  Elmira  Roys 
ter,  95. 

Shew,  Mrs.  Maria   Louise,  93,  94, 

95- 
Shall  aber,     Benjamin     Penhallow 

("Mrs.  Partington  "),  165,  171. 
Sigourney,   Mrs.   Lydia    Huntley, 

248. 

Sinless  Child,  The,  162. 
Sketch- Book,  The,  I,  15,  36,  64,  270. 
Slick,  Sam,  157. 
Smalley,  George  W.,  260 
Smith,  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Oakes,  162. 
Smith,  Seba,  158-162. 
Smith,  Sydney,  141,  171. 
Snell,  Rev.  Thomas,  55. 
"Snowbound,"  252. 
SOME  HUMOURISTS,  153-175. 
Southern  Literary  Messenger,  The, 

82,  83,  84. 

Specimen  Days,  238. 
Sprague,  Charles,  119. 
Spy,  The,  30,  36,  37,  44. 


294 


INDEX 


Stace,  Gen.  William,  109. 
Stedman,   Edmund    Clarence,   98, 

i?3>  235»  282- 
Stephen,  Leslie,  261,  273. 
Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  240. 
Stone,  William  L.,  67. 
Stylus,  The,  96. 
Sumner,  Charles,  249,  280. 
"  Sunnyside,"  21,  22,  24. 
Swinburne,      Algernon     Charles, 

239- 

Symonds,  John  Addington,  227, 
229,  238,  240. 

^T\4L£S  (Poe,  1845),  9°- 

•*        Tales  of  a  Traveller,  18. 

Tales  of  my  Landlord,  60. 

Tales  of  the  Grotesque  and  Ara 
besque,  85. 

Talisman,  The,  65. 

Talleyrand,  32. 

Tamerlane  and  Other  Poems,  80. 

Tanglewood  Tales,  215. 

Taylor,  Bayard,  251. 

Tennyson,  Lord,  54,  222,  238. 

"  Tent  on  the  Beach,  The,"  251. 

Thackeray,  William  Makepeace, 
14,  123,  131,  259. 

Thanatopsis,  57-61,  75,  118. 

Thaxter,  Celia,  251. 

Thierry,  Augustin,  130. 

Thirty  Years  Out  of  the  Senate,  My, 
158. 

Thompson,  George,  243,  244. 

Thoreau,  Henry  David,  177,  178, 
191,  192,  193,  211,  230. 

"  Threnody,"  185. 

Ticknor,  George,  137,  270. 

Ticknor,  William  D.,  220. 

"  To  a  Waterfowl,"  61. 

"  To  Annie,"  94. 

"  To  Helen,"  94. 

"  To  my  Mother,"  93. 

Token,  The,  102,  207. 

Tompkins,  Governor,  of  New 
York,  13. 


Tour  on  the  Prairies,  A,  22. 
Transformation,  217. 
Traubel,  Horace  L.,  241. 
Tribune,  New  York,  45,  191,  230. 
Tristan  and  Isolde,  229. 
Trumbull,  Col.  John,  60. 
Tucker,  Miss  Ellen  Louisa,  183. 
Twain,  Mark,  49,  155,  175. 
Twice-Told  Tales,  207,  208. 
Two  Admirals,  The,  45. 
"  Two  Rivers,  The,"  189. 
Tyler,  Pres.  John,  22. 

T  TNI  TED    STATES  Literary 
U      Gazette,  The,  65. 
"  Unseen  Spirits,"  113. 

VAN    BUREN,    Pres.    Martin, 
127. 

Vanderlyn's  sketch  of  Irving,  5. 
Vanity  Fair,  New  York,  167. 
Van  Velsor,  Louisa,  224. 
Verplanck,  Gulian  Crommelin,  65. 
Virginia,  University  of,  78,  79. 
Virginians,  The,  131. 
Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,  The,  254. 
Voices  of  the  Night,  276. 
"  Voluntaries,"  195. 

WAGNER,  Richard,  229. 
Ward,  Gen.  Artemas,  166. 
Ward,  Artemus  (C.  F.  Browne), 

163-171. 

Ward,  Samuel,  280. 
Warner,  Charles  Dudley,  61,  155. 
"Washers   of  the  Shroud,  The," 

258. 
Washington,  George,  I,  2,  28,  221, 

279. 
Washington,  Life  of  (A.  Bancroft), 

126. 

Washington,  Life  of  ( Irving),  21,  24. 
Washington  Hospital  (Baltimore), 

96. 

Water  Witch,  The,  40. 
"Waterfowl,  To  a,"  61. 


INDEX 


295 


Waterston,  Rev.  Robert  C.,  72. 
Watson,  William,  259. 
"Wayside,"  214,  217,  219. 
Webster,  Daniel,  132,  221. 
Wedgwood  family,  136. 
Weed,  Thurlow,  44,  45. 
Wendell,  Prof.  Barrett,  243. 
West  Point  Academy,  81,  82. 
White,  Eliza,  95. 
White,  Miss  Maria,  254. 
White,  T.  W.,  84. 
Whitman,     George     Washington, 

235- 
Whitman,   Mrs.  Louisa  Van   Vel- 

sor,  224. 

Whitman,  Mrs.  Sarah  Helen,  94. 
Whitman,  Thomas  Jefferson,  227. 
WHITMAN,  WALT,  222-241. 
Whitman,  Walter  W.,  224. 
Whittier,  Elizabeth,  250. 
Whittier,  John  Greenleaf,  75,  192, 

195,  242,  243,  244,  245-252,  263, 

264. 
WHITTIER  AND  LOWELL,  242-264. 


Williams  College,  55,  56. 
WILLIS,  HALLECK,  AND   DRAKE, 

99-124. 

Willis,  Mrs.  Cornelia  Grinnell,  109. 
Willis,  Mrs.  Hannah  Parker,  100. 
Willis,  Mrs.  Mary  Stace,  109. 
Willis,  Deacon  Nathaniel,  100. 
Willis,  Nathaniel  Parker,  88,  93, 

99-113,  114,  119,  123,  216. 
Wilson,  Gen.  James  Grant,  114. 
Wit  of  Women,  The,  155. 
Wolfert's  Roost,  21. 
Wonder  Book,  The,  213. 
Woodberry,  Prof.  George  E.,  76, 

77,  98. 
"Woodman,    Spare    that    Tree," 

106. 

Woodworth,  Samuel,  105. 
"  Worthies,  The  Nine,"  5. 

YALE  College,  32,  56,  101. 
Young,  Brigham,  169. 
"  Young  America,"  120. 
Youth's  Companion,  The,  100. 


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